GWPFhttp://www.desmogblog.com/taxonomy/term/6314/all
enLeading UK Sceptic Group Promotes Koch-Funded Canadian Climate Denierhttp://desmog.uk/2015/01/13/leading-UK-sceptic-group-promotes-koch-funded-canadian-climate-denier
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/Ross_McKitrick_Guelph%20University%20Wikimedia%20Commons.jpg?itok=JAgE8E2m" width="200" height="267" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>Canadian climate denier <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2015/01/06/ross-mckitrick-stoked-climate-denial">Ross McKitrick</a> has officially taken over as chairman of the academic advisory council of <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/01/nigel-lawson-honourable-man">Lord Lawson</a>’s controversial climate denying charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (<span class="caps">GWPF</span>).</p>
<p>The Economics professor is also a Senior Fellow of the Koch-and Exxon-funded <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/fraser-institute">Fraser Institute</a>, a libertarian think tank based in Vancouver, British Columbia.</p>
<p>McKitrick succeeds British economist <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/david-henderson">David Henderson</a>, 87 – the man responsible for inspiring Lawson’s climate scepticism over a decade ago.</p>
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<p>Henderson, who stepped down at his own request on 1 January 2015, had been chairman since the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>’s inception in 2009. Prior to that he was the head of the Economics and Statistics Department at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (<span class="caps">OECD</span>) from 1984 to 1992.</p>
<p>A visiting professor at the Westminster Business School, Henderson is also an advisory council member of free market think tank, the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/institute-economic-affairs">Institute of Economic Affairs</a>.</p>
<p><strong>Lawson’s Inspiration</strong></p>
<p>Lawson and Henderson knew each other long before they started talking about climate change. This fateful conversation would begin at the end of 2004 when Lawson revealed his interest in climate change during a lecture at the London School of Economics.</p>
<p>As Lawson recalls: “I said there were two issues … that really did not come across my desk at the time I was Chancellor in 1989 which are now two big issues, which were the European Monetary Union and climate change, global warming. And, I made an illusion that I was rather concerned that the climate change issue was not being analysed in economic terms and this whole dimension appeared to be missing and concerned me.</p>
<p>“After that, David Henderson, who I had known for many years, who had been taking an interest in the subject for some time, starting talking to me about this,” he explains.</p>
<p>So much of an inspiration was Henderson that Lawson even dedicated his book, <em>An Appeal to Reason: A Cool Look at Global Warming,</em> to him. It reads: “To David Henderson, who first aroused my interest in all of this.”</p>
<p>Henderson also knew McKitrick in the lead up to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>’s debut. In 2007, he spoke alongside the Canadian at the Fraser Institute’s launch of their Independent Summary for Policymakers.</p>
<p>McKitrick was also invited by Henderson to speak at small, informal discussion panels in England with other like-minded individuals, including <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/oct/25/peter-lilley-climate-change-quotes">‘global lukewarmist’</a> Peter Lilley.</p>
<p><strong>Instrumental Feedback</strong></p>
<p>But <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/benny-peiser">Benny Peiser</a>, director general of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>, seems a little confused about Henderson’s role in the charity.</p>
<p>Speaking to Brendan Montague, editor of <em>DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span></em>, back in 2010, he said: “David Henderson was heavily involved … The original idea was Lawson’s but Henderson was instrumental by giving feedback.”</p>
<p>Later, in 2013, he said: “David Henderson, to my knowledge, had nothing to do with <span class="caps">GWPF</span> … He wasn’t involved in the set up.”</p>
<p>And as Sir Ian Byatt, member of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>'s academic advisory council, told Montague: “David knows the importance of getting influence on these things and one of the great things that David did, which has all carried on in the Global Warming Policy Foundation, is the bringing together of science, economics and politics.”</p>
<p><strong>McKitrick’s Promotion</strong></p>
<p>His successor certainly has some big shoes to fill. While Henderson will continue to remain an active member of the council, what does McKitrick’s promotion signify for the future of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>?</p>
<p>A member of the council since 2010, McKitrick was chosen from a slew of renowned climate sceptics. Other members include heir to a vast British coal fortune, Lord <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/matt-ridley">Matt Ridley,</a> and <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/22/coal-lights-fires-under-climate-science">Richard Lindzen</a>, one of the original sceptic scientists to emerge during the 1980s.</p>
<p>Perhaps McKitrick's contribution to climate sceptic blogger <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/11/mcintyre-s-missing-millions-and-how-climategate-blogger-missed-out-deal-lifetime">Steve McIntyre</a>’s critique of Michael Mann’s hockey stick graph was one point in his favour. After all, the<a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/08/lawson-and-monckton-row-over-climate-science-campainging"> <span class="caps">GWPF</span></a> has praised McKitrick for being “instrumental in exposing the fatal flaws of the so-called Hockey Stick.”</p>
<p>McKitrick has also authored a couple reports that have been submitted to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>, including<a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/mckitrick-ipcc_reforms.pdf"> a 49-page report</a> calling for ‘radical reform’ of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (<span class="caps">IPCC</span>) <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/ross-mckitrick-evidence-based-approach-pricing-co2-emissions/">and another</a> arguing for an ‘evidenced-based approach to pricing <span class="caps">CO</span>2 emissions’.</p>
<p>He has also become a regular speaker at the Koch-connected Heartland Institute’s annual International Conference on Climate Change. So, whatever the deciding factor, McKitrick’s climate denial stock has just gone up.</p>
<p><a href="https://twitter.com/kylamandel">@kylamandel</a></p>
<p>Photo: Guelph University Wikimedia Commons</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/ross-mckitrick">ross mckitrick</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2750">david henderson</a></div></div></div>Tue, 13 Jan 2015 17:49:30 +0000Kyla Mandel8977 at http://www.desmogblog.comMcIntyre's Mission: An Obsessive Quest to Disprove Michael Mann's Hockey Stickhttp://www.desmogblog.com/2014/11/30/mcintyre-mission-obsessive-quest-disprove-michael-mann-hockey-stick
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/Steve%20McIntyre_1_0.jpg?itok=wjlGF1ZN" width="178" height="180" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p dir="ltr">There is no better way to describe self-appointed climate auditor<a href="http://desmogblog.com/steve-mcintyre"> Steve McIntyre</a> than ‘determined’. Highly determined even.</p>
<p dir="ltr">And you would have to be pretty obstinate to try and poke holes in peer-reviewed climate science given that McIntyre claims he does not receive a salary signed by Big Oil. As author of the sceptic blog <em>Climate Audit</em>, all of McIntyre’s work is funded on his own dime.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Of course, his hotel accommodation while in London this August, where our interview was conducted, was paid for by Lord Lawson’s <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/02/exposed-lawson-s-climate-denial-donors-links-tobacco-and-oil-backed-think-tank">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a> (<span class="caps">GWPF</span>).</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>I don’t have a big objection to think tanks sponsoring things … I don’t think there’s enough support for sceptics or critics as it is,” says the Ontario-based retired mining consultant whose blog inspired a hacker to break into servers at the University of East Anglia (<span class="caps">UEA</span>) and steal emails and data shared between the world’s leading global warming scientists.</p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>If I wanted to make money, I’d have stayed in the mining business, rather than try to get money from <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/19/climategate-five-years-later">Climategate</a>,” he adds.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>I’m much more effective [on my own] than if I was depending on them,” McIntyre, 67, tells us. “I think that’s actually been important to my staying power in this.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">In an ironic twist,<a href="http://desmog.uk/2014/11/11/mcintyre-s-missing-millions-and-how-climategate-blogger-missed-out-deal-lifetime"> McIntyre actually lost out on millions of dollars</a> because his almost obsessive pursuit of climate researcher<a href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/holocene/public_html/Mann/index.php"> Professor Michael Mann</a> meant he missed out on “the deal of a lifetime” when his old company literally struck gold.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For most, this would be a powerful dissuasion. But not for McIntyre.</p>
<p dir="ltr">While he obsessively continues to try and find mistakes in Mann’s work, he is unwittingly providing new—free—material for the oil-funded neoliberal think tanks to spin into a substantive attack on climate science.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So deep is McIntyre in his mission to audit Mann’s climate data that it’s unclear whether he truly understands his role in this bigger attack on climate science.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>The Hockey Stick</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">McIntyre’s quest began in 2002 when he started questioning Mann’s ‘hockey stick graph’. It was during this time that the Canadian Government was promoting the Kyoto Protocol, claiming 1990 was the hottest year of the decade. And,<a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/4753780/1990s-was-the-hottest-decade-of-millennium.html"> in fact, it was</a>. The following year, the <span class="caps">UN</span> Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (<span class="caps">IPCC</span>) featured the graph prominently in its report.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><img alt="" src="/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/hockey%20stick%20mann.jpg" style="width: 560px; height: 407px;" /></p>
<p class="rtecenter" dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:9px;"><em>Mann’s Hockey Stick graph <span id="docs-internal-guid-b1688c52-f5fd-d9f4-33c3-82257aa1c44d">(</span><a href="http://www.meteo.psu.edu/%7Emann/shared/research/ONLINE-PREPRINTS/Millennium/mbh99.pdf">Mann 1999</a>)</em></span></p>
<p dir="ltr">Sceptical of the graph’s conclusions, McIntyre felt he had adequate mathematical skills to audit the graph himself, having studied Mathematics at the University of Toronto. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science in 1969. McIntyre then went on to study Philosophy, Politics and Economics at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, graduating in 1971.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However, McIntyre—a surgeon’s son who grew up among Canada’s Liberal elite—turned down a graduate scholarship to study Mathematical Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (<span class="caps">MIT</span>) due to his parents’ ugly divorce, and so returned home to become a businessman.</p>
<p dir="ltr">For the next 30 years McIntyre worked in the mineral business. He was the president and founder of Northwest Exploration Company Limited and a director of its parent company, Northwest Explorations Inc. This was taken over in 1998 by <span class="caps">CGX</span> Resources to form <span class="caps">CGW</span> Energy, an oil and gas exploration company. McIntyre was no longer a director but remained a strategic advisor from 2000 to 2003, when his obsession over climate data began.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Shifting gears from mining minerals to data mining, his initial inquiry into climate change required “little more than free time, effort, knowledge of some statistics and linear algebra, and some software,”<a href="http://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/centre-of-the-storm/"> <em>Macleans Magazine</em> has previously described</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>McIntyre meets McKitrick</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">As McIntyre investigated the hockey stick graph, he posted comments criticising Mann’s data on internet discussion group climateskeptics. These comments were subsequently picked up in 2003 by the climate sceptic editor of a little known social science journal, <em>Energy <span class="amp">&amp;</span> Environment</em>. It was at this time that McIntyre joined up with Canadian Economics professor <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/ross-mckitrick">Ross McKitrick</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A senior fellow of the Fraser Institute, a Canadian free-market public policy think tank, and a member of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>’s academic advisory board, McKitrick proved integral to McIntyre’s mission.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The two drafted an article critiquing Mann’s hockey stick graph, claiming that the way the data was handled ensured that whatever data gets input, it will always produce a hockey stick shape.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Their article was published in <em>Energy <span class="amp">&amp;</span> Environment</em>, which avoids standard peer review.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The two also tried, without success, to get their findings published in the highly regarded <em>Nature</em> magazine, so they decided to publish a second piece in <em>Geophysical Research Letters</em>. Initially, both of their papers received very little attention outside climate-sceptic circles.</p>
<p dir="ltr">But thanks to a powerful <span class="caps">PR</span> campaign and strategic timing, their unsubstantiated criticisms landed on the front page of the Canadian newspaper the <em>National Post</em> and the <em><a href="http://www.heatisonline.org/contentserver/objecthandlers/index.cfm?ID=5492&amp;Method=Full">Wall Street Journal</a></em>.</p>
<p dir="ltr">As it turns out, <em>Energy <span class="amp">&amp;</span> Environment</em> editor Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen had rushed their first paper into publication for “policy impact reasons” prior to the <span class="caps">COP</span>9 climate talks in Milan. McIntyre was then flown to Washington <span class="caps">D.C.</span> to brief <span class="caps">US</span> business leaders and the staff of well-known climate denier Senator<a href="http://www.inhofe.senate.gov/"> James Inhofe</a>, who was at that time—<a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/120134/climate-change-denier-james-inhofe-lead-environment-committee">and is once again current frontrunner choice</a>—chair of the Environment and Public Works committee.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Adding more fodder to the pseudo-fire, McIntyre also later presented his findings to the Marshall Institute—an organisation with ties to the oil industry and whose board of directors includes William O’Keefe, a registered ExxonMobil lobbyist.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This is all despite the fact that Mann’s original hockey stick was never scientifically disproven.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>It’s all about the tree rings. Or is it?</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">Then in February 2004, a person known only as ‘John A’ offered to help McIntyre set up his <em>Climate Audit</em> blog where McIntyre continues to question Mann’s data. John’s identity remains a mystery to this day; McIntyre refused to give his real name, simply stating “he is a computer scientist”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Among other types of data, tree rings feature prominently throughout <em>Climate Audit</em>. This stems from McIntyre and McKitrick’s original hockey stick critique which looked at its temperature reconstructions dating before 1600. The two claimed this data was flawed due to problems with dendrochronology, the use of tree rings to estimate past temperatures, and issues with statistical calculations.</p>
<p dir="ltr">However, these claims have since been disproven. In 2008, Mann showed you don’t even need to use tree-ring data. This has resulted in many joking that climate scientists have more hockey sticks than an <span class="caps">NHL</span> locker room.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Using historical data—or proxy records—from ice cores, coral, lake sediments, glaciers, boreholes and stalagmites, it is possible to reconstruct the same hockey stick curve for Northern Hemisphere temperatures going back 1,300 years. If you add the tree-ring data, the same result holds for the past 1,700 years.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><img alt="" height="281" src="/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/NH_Temp_Reconstruction.gif" width="546" /></p>
<p class="rtecenter" dir="ltr"><span style="font-size:9px;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-b1688c52-f619-afc5-d4d1-4f4d0a858efa" style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(</span><a href="http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/pubs/mann2008/mann2008.html" style="text-decoration:none;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 70, 170); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">Mann 2008</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: transparent; font-weight: normal; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">)</span></span></p>
<p dir="ltr">It is fair to say then, that if Mann’s hockey stick was wrong, the world would know by now. Twelve years later, McIntyre still has not disproved it. Yet, climate sceptics continue to focus their crosshairs on Mann.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>From an intellectual point of view, these contrarians are pathetic, because there’s no scientific validity to their arguments whatsoever,” <a href="http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/behind-the-hockey-stick/?page=1">Mann told the <em>Scientific American</em></a>. “But they’re very skilled at deducing what sorts of disingenuous arguments and untruths are likely to be believable to the public that doesn’t know better.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">And it was exactly this scrupulous and targeted criticism of temperature data and statistical analysis by McIntyre that inspired one Climate Audit reader to hack the emails of climate scientists at the <span class="caps">UEA</span> in 2009.</p>
<p dir="ltr">It began with McIntyre asking readers to submit <span class="caps">FOI</span> requests for information on the university’s confidentiality agreements in a sideways attempt to get his hands on the researchers’ climate data. The logic was that “if they’d sent it to other people… they had waived any confidentiality rights and on several counts they could not selectively send it to their pals and not send it to me,” McIntyre explains.</p>
<p dir="ltr">A few days later, McIntyre revisited the university’s website only to discover the very data he was after: “I noticed a file that was about the right size of a tree ring data set… so I opened it up and read it and thought ‘this is funny, this is the same data they’re refusing’.”</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>McIntyre’s miracle mole</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">So McIntyre downloaded the data and decided to have some fun.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>I then wrote a post at Climate Audit where I had some fun with it… a mole, I didn’t actually say a mole [provided] this data but I kind of made it. I edited a mole and then I announced that I was in possession of the version that they wouldn’t send to me,” he explains.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>It caused quite a commotion,” McIntyre recalls. Dozens of readers started looking through the website themselves, some of them even discovering exposed passwords.</p>
<p dir="ltr">Then, around midnight on 17 November, McIntyre’s phone rang.</p>
<p dir="ltr">At the time, McIntyre was in his study next to the bedroom in his detached Toronto townhouse where he lives with wife Nola. Still in his jeans, he sat by the <span class="caps">PC</span>, surrounded by pictures of his children, Geoffrey, Emily and Graham, as well as his four grandchildren.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>I don’t get a lot of calls at midnight, except when one of the kids calls. Usually, calls at midnight are not something I welcome,” McIntyre says.</p>
<p dir="ltr">The call came from<a href="http://berkeleyearth.org/team/steven-mosher"> Steven Mosher</a>—an open-source software developer, crucial in the initial dissemination of the leaked climate data—asking him about a series of leaked emails from <span class="caps">UEA</span> which contained McIntyre’s name more than 100 times. It was only a couple of days later that anyone noticed the now-infamous comment “a miracle has happened”.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>My first reaction [to the leaked files] was one of shock,” McIntyre describes. “I felt no vindication, [but] tremendous disappointment, and I thought it upsetting that people had acted this way.”</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>I felt that I had tried to behave politely. I’d done things the right way, and to have caused this, you know, intense animosity was much worse than I thought, you know, and the coarseness of language and conduct I found appalling,” he continues. “And I just kind of lost, my interest sagged and I didn’t comment on the blog very much.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">McIntyre has been known for his more measured take to the climate change debate. Speaking at the Heartland Institute’s<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/denial-a-palooza-4th-international-conference-climate-change-heartland"> fourth international conference on climate change</a> in 2010—probably much to the dismay of conference attendees hoping for something more spirited—he said:</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>There is far too much angriness in my opinion on both sides of the debate. People are far too quick to yell ‘fraud’ at the other side. I think such language is self-indulgent and counterproductive.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">McIntyre tells us he doesn’t like to use the word conspiracy on his blog because he doesn’t find it “conducive to a polite discussion, and most of the people who use those words are too angry”.</p>
<p dir="ltr">So, rather than responding immediately to the leaked information, McIntyre went to play squash the next day at the Badminton Racquet Club for some tension relief.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>The pursuit continues</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr">But his interest was not lost for long. Almost 10 years later, his relentless pursuit continues. He says he doesn’t have much animosity towards Mann, but this doesn’t mean McIntyre will stop.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><span class="dquo">“</span>I think it’s entirely possible for somebody to be right about the big picture and wrong about the tree rings,” he argues.</p>
<p dir="ltr">This is<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2011/nov/23/attacks-climate-scientists-real-climategate"> despite nine separate investigations</a> vindicating the climate science and climate scientists on the hacked <span class="caps">UEA</span> emails and the <span class="caps">UK</span> Government formally stating “the information contained in the illegally disclosed emails does not provide any evidence to discredit… anthropogenic climate change.”</p>
<p dir="ltr">Yet, five years on, McIntyre and the<a href="http://desmog.uk/2014/11/17/climate-deniers-still-tout-debunked-conspiracy-5-years-on"> climate denial community continue to harp on</a> about tree rings and the<a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/11/19/climategate-five-years-later"> debunked hacking scandal</a>.</p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>With reporting by <a href="http://www.desmog.uk/user/brendan-montague">Brendan Montague</a></em></p>
<p dir="ltr">Photos: Michael Mann</p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/1505">Steve McIntyre</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4624">Climategate</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/ross-mckitrick">ross mckitrick</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/19116">John A</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/michael-mann">michael mann</a></div></div></div>Sun, 30 Nov 2014 08:01:00 +0000Kyla Mandel8845 at http://www.desmogblog.comGWPF Funder Lord Leach - Relying on Unreliable Global Warming Informationhttp://desmog.uk/2014/10/08/gwpf-funder-lord-leach-relying-unreliable-global-warming-information
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/Unknown_0.jpeg?itok=YF0d84Vs" width="200" height="200" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/29/david-go-green-cameron-s-top-donors-financing-climate-denial">DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span> has found that</a> libertarian banker Lord Leach is a funder of the anti-climate political advocacy group the Global Warming Policy Foundation (<span class="caps">GWPF</span>). <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/90513-0003.htm">Lord Leach gave a long speech in Parliament</a> detailing his beliefs about global warming, writes <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/profile/dana-nuccitelli">Dana Nuccitelli</a> (pictured). </p>
<p>The speech was full of inaccuracies, myths, and misinformation. Known as a <a href="http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop">Gish Gallop</a>, the sheer number of false claims in the speech would require tremendous effort to debunk. Most telling were the sources that Lord Leach relied upon to support his statements. For example…</p>
<p><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/oct/08/gwpf-funder-leach-relying-on-unreliable-sources-of-info"><span class="caps">READ</span> <span class="caps">MORE</span> <span class="caps">AT</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">GUARDIAN</span>…</a></p>
<p><a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/10/02/time-teach-lord-leach-about-climate-science"><span class="caps">READ</span> <span class="caps">AND</span> <span class="caps">FISK</span> <span class="caps">LEACH</span> <span class="caps">SPEECH</span>…</a></p>
<!--break--></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7558">Lord Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/18261">Dana Nuccitelli</a></div></div></div>Wed, 08 Oct 2014 15:18:01 +0000Guest8617 at http://www.desmogblog.comTime to Teach Lord Leach About Climate Science!http://desmog.uk/2014/10/02/time-teach-lord-leach-about-climate-science
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/6a00d83451b31c69e201630613a760970d.png?itok=32QleB4X" width="150" height="188" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p dir="ltr"><em>DeSmoggers asked to teach Lord Leach the errors of climate denial scientists S Fred Singer and Richard Lindzen and help stem the funding to the Global Warming Policy Foundation.</em></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/10/02/meet-lord-lawson-s-shy-climate-denial-funders-lord-leach">Libertarian banker Lord Leach</a> is a stalwart ‘spiritual’ supporter of Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation who has been influenced by climate deniers <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/s-fred-singer">S Fred Singer</a> and <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen">Richard Lindzen</a>.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">In a long and sprawling speech in the House of Lords the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> backer sets out his doubts about the established science of climate change. He echoes some of the economic arguments developed by the Institute of Economic Affairs and Lord Lawson against climate change mitigation.</span></p>
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<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><em>DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span></em> would be absolutely delighted if its readers - including the many climate scientists among you - could engage respectfully with the points he raises. The non-expert would assist greatly in using the resource </span><a href="http://skepticalscience.com/" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">SkepticalScience.com</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> to identify the key peer reviewed science papers that address the points being made by the banker.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Informative Debate</span></strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Perhaps you could persuade one of Lawson’s key fundraising targets of the robustness of climate science and in the process reduce the effectiveness of the Global Warming Policy Foundation and its less charitable and educational Global Warming Policy Forum.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Here is the speech, given on 13 May 2009. We have numbered the paragraphs so that readers can easily identify the debating points you hope to address. Please remember that, now we have his attention, we aim to engage Lord Leach in a respectful and informative debate. The following transcript is </span><a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld200809/ldhansrd/text/90513-0006.htm" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">borrowed from Hansard</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">13 May 2009 : Column 1056</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lord Leach of Fairford:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">1. My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Lea, referred to ships passing in the night, and rightly so on the economic front. I hope that I shall find myself on <span class="caps">HMS</span> “Lawson”, rather than <span class="caps">HMS</span> “Stern”. The same goes for ships passing in the night in science, which has now devolved largely into a shouting match between extreme alarmists and sceptics, with not nearly enough moderate dialogue between them.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">2. Perhaps I could help to gain a little perspective on this by referring to what my noble friend Lord Lawson referred to as the unsubstantiated assertions of the Government, to see where common sense stands on those.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">3. Since the end of the little ice age in the late 19th century, the world has been re-warming at a rate of about 0.6 degrees centigrade per century. There have been fluctuations in that. There was a period of rapid warming from 1920 to 1940, much as there was more recently. There was no explanation for that.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">4. There was a period of cooling until 1975, when emissions rose quite rapidly. There was no explanation for that. There was a period of rapid warming from 1975 until the end of the century, much as there was from the 1920s to the 1940s. This has been seized on by alarmists as evidence of really frightening growth in temperatures. However, it has been succeeded in the 21st century by nine years of static and, more recently, falling temperatures. Again, that is completely against all the prognostications of the alarmists and the <span class="caps">IPCC</span> and wholly unexplained.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">5. When you look more deeply into this at where all these measurements are coming from, you find a large number of them are extremely unreliable or, in the case of the Antarctic and the Arctic, almost non-existent.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">6. By far the most reliable database, which is not all that reliable, of any large land mass is in the United States of America, where there is a huge number of recording stations. We now know that temperatures in the United States in the 1930s were the same as, maybe even very marginally warmer than, they were in the 1990s.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">7. That is probably the best approximation there is for what has really been happening in temperatures—that is, a growth of about 0.5 to 0.6 of a degree per century, a figure that fluctuates for a whole variety of reasons that I shall not go into here.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">Lord Leach of Fairford:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">8. My Lords, if the noble Lord would let me finish the sentence that I was in the middle of, I can say that this photograph of the <span class="caps">US</span> nuclear ship “Skate” was taken at the North Pole during the winter in March 1958. It was completely ice-free. If you put that together with the ice records I mentioned, there is a great deal of myth that passes about the North Pole and the South Pole. The North Pole is subject to currents, which probably explains the fact that it is sometimes completely ice-free. It is not a great static block of ice that is melting. Those are the facts about the Antarctic ice.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">9. Laboratory science theory states that doubling the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures by 1 degree. A doubling of carbon dioxide takes place approximately every 200 years at the current rate of emissions, perhaps a bit more. Therefore, the whole argument hangs by a thread.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">10. Do other factors such as currents, sun and clouds accentuate that warming or do they decrease it? The <span class="caps">IPCC</span>’s theory is that they increase that warming. That is why the Government have, as my noble friend Lord Lawson, said, made the completely unsubstantiated assertion that temperatures will rise by 4 degrees this century.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">11. Probably the best climatologist in the world is Professor Lindzen and another good one is Professor Singer. Professor Lindzen calculates that the effect of all these other feedbacks, as they are known in the jargon, is to reduce temperatures not increase them.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">12. He calculates that a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere would increase temperatures by about 0.3 of a degree. You can argue about the science and I am not a good enough climate physicist to make any direct contribution on that. What you cannot argue about are the facts.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">13. The facts are that there has been no acceleration whatever in global warming since emissions took off after World War 2 and that temperatures today, after the past nine years of static or cooling temperatures, are bang on that consistent recovery of 0.6 degrees from the little ice age and are well below even the lowest estimates of the <span class="caps">IPCC</span> range. So observation suggests that Professor Lindzen may be right and the <span class="caps">IPCC</span> completely wrong.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">Lord Leach of Fairford:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">14. My Lords, if I may say so, that is a perfect example of unsubstantiated assertion and anecdote. The world’s leading expert by far on sea levels is Professor Axel Morner, the <span class="caps">IPCC</span>’s lead author on sea levels.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">15. He says that sea levels have been increasing at six and a half inches per century since the little ice age, that they have over the past 100 years modestly declined, and that they are now rising at about six inches per century.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">16. The assertion of one and a half metres, and Al Gore’s absurd assertion of many metres, are pure speculation and wholly unsubstantiated by observation, or by the best single expert on sea levels in the universe—the <span class="caps">IPCC</span>’s lead author, who resigned from the <span class="caps">IPCC</span>, if I am not mistaken, because he refused to substitute fanciful numbers for the right ones.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">17. I turn back to the science. It is widely believed that there is a universal consensus. If that is so, why have 33,000 scientists—the number grows so fast that I may be out of date, and it may be 35,000 or 40,000—signed a protest against the climate extremism expressed in the Kyoto Protocol? There is no scientific consensus. There is an official, political consensus.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">18. There are dangers to people’s careers and funding, and to the esteem in which they are held in official circles, if they express the views that I am expressing now. I can express them because I am not a scientist, so my career is not at risk. There is absolutely no consensus.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">19. I once wrote a letter to the Times, saying roughly what I am saying now. I received a flood of letters, and those supporting me outnumbered those against me by six or seven to one. Many of them came from professors and fellows of the Royal Society who said that they did not care to speak out. That is just anecdote—I will not give their names—but it is typical.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">20. If you immerse yourself in the blogosphere, which is as good a place as any to study the science—and where sceptics are much more courteous and open to dissent than believers—you will find that scientific opinion is very divided, and that there are at least as many sceptics as believers.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">21. The concern of anybody who is open-minded, and who recognises that ships must not pass in the night and that we must try to come to some agreement, is that the Government are not open-minded. They have signed up to the most expensive possible version of climate extremism.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">22. Professor Carter, a distinguished economist specialising in climate economics in Australia, recently testified before the authorities there that emissions trading schemes would cost every Australian family 3,500 Australian dollars per year for a theoretical <span class="caps">IPCC</span>-modelled reduction of one-1,000th of a degree centigrade. Let us suppose—although he is a very distinguished witness—that he is wrong by a factor of 100.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">23. It would still be true that the theoretical saving in climate warming would be one-10th of 1 degree—a wholly trivial amount for a vast expenditure.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">24. I agree with my noble friend Lord Lawson that there has not been a proper cost-benefit analysis of this, and that what cost-benefit analysis there has been has gone wholly against the government programme.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">25. Has the Minister studied Professor Carter's figures? If so, does he agree with them; do the Government agree with them? If they do not, do they have better-founded estimates and what are they? As I say, the</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">13 May 2009 : Column 1059</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">professor is a very serious witness, and if he is even remotely right, the cost of government emission reduction schemes is frankly grotesque. He particularly applied it to emissions trading schemes, but the same goes for carbon offset, wind farms and various other forms of government-sponsored intervention.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">26. Sometimes people talk about those vast expenses as though they were free, as though they fell out of the air. They do not; they come out of the vast shortfall in resources that are needed for huge projects, whether for economic well-being, reafforestation, ocean pollution or disease control—to go rather closer to home than the climate change arena. The trillions that we intend to spend on those grotesque schemes have to be taken from somewhere, and that is where they will be taken from—from adaptation, flood defences, reafforestation and disease control projects. Or, if the money comes straight out of the economy, it will come out of the wealth creation that is essential to survive properly in the 21st century.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">27. It is not too late for the Government to reconsider. In my opinion, the only redeeming feature of the order is that there is not the slightest prospect that it will be taken seriously or actually implemented. Even if every other country signed up, it would not be implemented. I just ask the Government to reconsider this unsatisfactory proposal.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">13 May 2009 : Column 1061</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">Lord Leach of Fairford:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">28. My Lords, I said that more than 30,000 had signed a petition coming out in public. I referred to a few people who still have not come out. Among those 30,000 are many of the most distinguished scientists in the world. I can happily supply my noble friend with a list of 20 very distinguished scientists, including <span class="caps">IPCC</span> lead authors.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">Lord Leach of Fairford:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">29. My Lords, perhaps I may quickly answer those pertinent points. The big ice melting was about 12,000 years ago at the end of the last glaciation, which greatly increased sea levels. The more recent increases of about seven inches since the little ice age are thought by the experts to be due to thermal expansion, at which I think the noble Lord hinted. As the seas get a little warmer, they expand. At the moment, that is regarded to be the cause and not ice melting, because it has not melted.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">Lord Berkeley:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord. Will he explain what is causing the sea to expand? Presumably, it is getting warmer.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">Lord Leach of Fairford:</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><br /><span id="docs-internal-guid-f013782e-3fd6-e849-864d-119cf5158e8d">30. Yes, my Lords, with the recovery from the little ice age that I referred to earlier, that is at about 0.6 degrees per century since about 1370.</span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17815">Lord Leach</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7558">Lord Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17816">HMS Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17817">Lawson&#039;s Secrets</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5910">Skeptical Science</a></div></div></div>Thu, 02 Oct 2014 07:56:23 +0000Brendan Montague8429 at http://www.desmogblog.comLawson's Climate Denial Donor Boasts of Shale Gas Investmenthttp://desmog.uk/2014/09/30/lawson-climate-denial-backer-boasts-shale-gas-investment
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/118053800-Lord-Nigel-Lawson-10.jpg?itok=BVTGjU9N" width="200" height="134" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lord Lawson accepted a donation for his climate denial charity from a millionaire financier who successfully invested in shale gas fracking, <em>DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span></em> can reveal.</span></p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-99b1c23b-b20d-5ec0-541c-a60ba7665ca1" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Edgar Miller Jnr, a Texan-born venture capitalist, has been named as an </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">early donor, fundraiser, and founder</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> of the Global Warming Policy Foundation (<span class="caps">GWPF</span>) who claims he turned down the role of director when the charity was being established almost five years ago.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The revelations will be hugely embarrassing for Lawson. Miller intimates during an interview that his donation was dependent on the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> attacking climate science rather than policy, and he even suggests the former chancellor is “a little bit” scientifically illiterate.</span></p>
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<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Miller boasts of his “very successful” investment in one of the first fracking companies, and confirms that today he holds mineral rights relating to property once owned by his family that he hopes will earn him further profits from shale gas. “We’ll get some royalties out of it so we’re motivated to do it,” he said.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The investor has also paid thousands of pounds to Viscount Christopher Monckton, the eccentric aristocrat who tours Britain, Australia and the United States attacking climate science. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The cash paid for an investment report about climate science and led to Monckton publishing a lengthy attack in the <em>Sunday Telegraph</em> back in 2006. Monckton and Lawson, related by marriage, both became interested in climate change around the same time.</span></p>
<p><strong style="letter-spacing: 0.389999985694885px; line-height: 1.5em;">Early Frackers</strong></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lawson has repeatedly stated that he would not accept funding from the oil industry or any individual with “a significant interest” in fossil fuel companies</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; letter-spacing: 0.35pt; line-height: 1.5em;">—</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em; font-size: 13px;">a statement that is in fact true as Miller has enjoyed a “less than significant” financial benefit from energy investments.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lawson last month launched the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> to apparently circumvent charity commission rules stipulating that his <span class="caps">GWPF</span> must remain “educational” rather than political. Dr Benny Peiser, a social scientist, is the director of the foundation.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Miller, a professor of private equity at the Cass Business School and owner of Palladian Limited, told a reporter over dinner: “I was concerned when they [the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>] weren’t really addressing the underlying science and they kept putting the focus on policy…</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="dquo">“</span>Most people in the <span class="caps">UK</span> don’t understand the science. The <span class="caps">UK</span> is scientifically illiterate. I’m not saying that you don’t have great scientists or engineers, but the average person that you meet walking along the street knows very little about the science.”</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">He added: “Initially I refused to give them anything because they were resistant to debating the science. Benny just wanted to talk about policy; I said I completely disagree with that… I’ve also brought one or two other donors in, who have probably altogether given £30,000 to £40,000.”</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="dquo">“</span>I think one of Benny’s problems is he doesn’t have a fundamental grounding in science [and] that he has a fear. That’s one of the general problems in this country… most people are scientifically illiterate. Nigel is a little bit that way.”</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Miller also described Lawson as having “a huge ego” adding: “his only problem is his personal life is a disaster.” But he confirmed that the former chancellor had Osborne’s ear. “These guys are all talking to each other all the time, they go to the same dinner parties, they spend weekends together and [attend] house parties together.”</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">He said of his fracking investments: “Fracking is nothing, and, you know, you’ve got 30 years of experience in the States with basically no problems at all. In fact, I invested in one of the companies which was one of the early frackers back in the 80s.”</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">“There’s a guy who just died called [George P] Mitchell, who was a Texan, who developed the technology. It was a very [a] very successful [investment]. Very successful.”</span></p>
<p><strong>Basically a Bullshitter</strong></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Miller, who has lived in the <span class="caps">UK</span> for more than 40 years, was a senior advisor in the Conservative party and claims he helped draft the 2005 election manifesto. But after initially supporting Cameron’s leadership, he found the Etonian to be “weak”, with “too many close friends around him” who “change his mind”.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">After lunch with the Prime Minister and chancellor, Miller's views had crystallised: “I came away thinking Cameron was basically a bullshitter [who] didn’t want to listen to anybody [and who] lacked in substance.” He added: “Osborne I thought was as arrogant…but I thought had more intellectual substance.”</span></p>
<p>When contacted by DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span> last night, Miller replied: “<span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">You imply I have been a donor to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>. I am proud to say this is true </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">(albeit a small donor) and I would be pleased if you publicise this fact. I </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">encouraged Lord Lawson in the early days of <span class="caps">GWPF</span> and subsequently have </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">encouraged others to donate. I intend to continue to contribute. </span></p>
<div>
<span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">“I have the upmost admiration and respect for Lord Lawson for having the </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">initiative, courage and fortitude to establish the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>, in spite of endless</span></div>
<div>
criticism and ad-hominem attacks thrown at him. </div>
<div>
</div>
<div>
“He and Benny Peiser have <span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">established the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> as the only authoritative public source in the <span class="caps">UK</span> </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">providing a fact-based perspective on the global warming issue. I have </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">subscribed to Benny Peiser's newsletter for years. This and Benny's long </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">experience in the field has made an immeasurable contribution to the </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">undoubted success of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>.”</span></div>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7558">Lord Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2642">conservative party</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17815">Lord Leach</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17814">Edgar Miller</a></div></div></div>Tue, 30 Sep 2014 07:15:03 +0000Brendan Montague8563 at http://www.desmogblog.comLabour Attacks Climate Denier Lawson for Gas Bills Double Standardshttp://www.desmogblog.com/2014/09/21/labour-attacks-climate-denier-lawson-gas-bills-double-standards
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/Lord_Nigel_Lawson.jpg?itok=t4_YvYnY" width="200" height="143" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p dir="ltr"><em><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">Shadow minister vents fury </span></em><em style="letter-spacing: 0.389999985694885px; line-height: 1.5em;">on eve of world climate summit </em><em style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">about environment being blamed for higher gas bills by climate deniers and says privatisation and deregulation are the real culprits </em></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">Labour shadow minister </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.389999985694885px; line-height: 1.5em;">Barry Gardiner</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date"><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date">today</span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> accused the Tory grandee <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson">Lord Lawson</a> of “promoting global warming” and apparent double standards after the former chancellor blamed climate change measures for high gas bills for British families.</span></p>
<!--break-->
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">The <span style="letter-spacing: 0.389999985694885px;">shadow minister for the natural environment</span> said the former chancellor’s “militant privatisation” played a key role in increasing energy prices for millions of hard working families when the Tory was in power. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Lawson helped double gas prices over three years shortly before privatising British Gas. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Gardiner added Lawson was rarely “troubled by misfortunes more likely to affect others than himself”. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><a href="http://www.desmog.uk/2014/09/21/lawson-s-account-doubling-gas-bills-ahead-privatisation" style="letter-spacing: 0.389999985694885px; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="caps">READ</span> <span class="caps">LAWSON</span>'S <span class="caps">FIRST</span> <span class="caps">HAND</span> <span class="caps">ACCOUNT</span> <span class="caps">OF</span> <span class="caps">TORIES</span> <span class="caps">DOUBLING</span> <span class="caps">GAS</span> <span class="caps">PRICES</span> <span class="caps">IN</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> 1980s</a></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The shadow minister was speaking in the lead-up to the </span><a href="http://www.labour.org.uk/annual_conference_2014" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Labour Party conference in Manchester </a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">and days before the </span><a href="http://www.un.org/climatechange/summit/" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">United Nations climate change summit</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> of world leaders in New York, being hosted by its Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon “to galvanize and catalyze climate action”. </span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span>Millions are today joining the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/live/2014/sep/21/peoples-climate-march-live">People's Climate March</a> in Manchester, London, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/09/19/new-york-city-amped-people-s-climate-march">New York</a> and 150 cities and towns around the world calling on politicians to take action to prevent catastrophic climate change.</span></p>
<p><strong>Clean Energy</strong></p>
<p><a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-attacks-coalition-as-uks-energy-bills-soar-21-per-cent-in-three-years-9673864.html" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Energy bills in Britain have increased <span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date">24.7</span> percent</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> in the last three years, under the Tory-led Coalition government, according to a new House of Commons analysis of Department of Energy and Climate Change and international statistics. This is the second most rapid increase in household energy bills in the developing world.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lord Lawson has through his charity the Global Warming Policy Foundation </span><a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2001244/Gas-prices-Fuel-bills-increase-crackpot-green-taxes-youre-told-about.html" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">waged a high profile and effective campaign blaming high energy bills</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> on government levies designed to reduce profligate use of high-carbon fuels while at the same time subsidising the transition to renewable, clean energy.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">The former <a href="http://blogs.endsreport.com/carbonandenergy/2011/07/26/lord-lawson-and-the-daily-mail-gang-up-on-green-energy-taxes/">chancellor reportedly enjoyed lunch with Paul Dacre</a>, editor in chief of the Daily Mail, before Britain’s most influential newspaper joined his crusade and repeated his hotly debated claims about the cost of the green levies on household bills.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">However, Gardiner <span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date"><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date"><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date">today</span></span></span> reminded the public that Lord Lawson had during a Conservative party conference in 1982 forced through a continued rise in gas prices for millions of struggling families and businesses across Britain.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The Tories hiked gas prices by 10 percent above inflation each year for three years from 1979 - when prices were already rising by 14 percent. This meant the cost to homes almost doubled. The huge increase came just before the Conservative government privatised British Gas much to the delight to the City of London.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">The huge rises were first implemented by the then energy secretary David Howell, now a member of the House of Lords and father-in-law to the current chancellor, George Osborne. Howell has been attacked by environmentalists for his seeming climate scepticism and avid support for the fracking of shale gas - <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/may/14/fracking-bribes-could-cost-votes-warns-lord-howell">especially in the “desolate” North East</a>.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Avid Climate Denier</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">The controversial move was not supported by then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and was fiercely opposed by grassroots Conservatives. Lawson was only able to force the final stages of the price rises through conference due to the support of a young Peter Lilley.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lilley served as a parliamentary under secretary to Lawson before being promoted to the cabinet on chancellor’s advice shortly after. </span><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date"><span __postbox-detected-content="__postbox-detected-date">Today</span></span></span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> he is </span><a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/peter-lilley-costly-decarbonisation-of-the-economy-is-based-on-flawed-stern-review/" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">avid climate denier who works closely with Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Gardiner said: “Mr Lawson's foundation does exactly what its name implies, it promotes global warming! Most people would regard that as a bad thing but Mr Lawson's capacity for self reflection has rarely allowed him to be troubled by misfortunes more likely to affect others than himself.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="dquo">“</span>When he remarks on the current price of energy we should not be above reminding him that he was the original deregulator of the financial markets and the militant privatiser of our utilities in the first place.”</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The Shadow Minister based his criticisms on a highly dramatic account of the 1982 Conservative party conference relayed in Lawson’s own autobiography, </span><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-View-No-11-Memoirs-Radical/dp/0593022181/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1408099882&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=The+View+from+Number+11%3A+The+Memoirs+of+a+Radical+Tory" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The View from Number 11: The Memoirs of a Radical Tory</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">, published a decade later after the chancellor had resigned in disgrace.</span></p>
<p><strong>The Rumpus Reached A Climax</strong></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="dquo">“</span>Inevitably this unpopular new policy came under severe attack…Conservative <span class="caps">MP</span>s were inundated with complaints from constituents, and…members of our own side rebelled,” he recalled.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="dquo">“</span>The rumpus reached a climax at the 1982 party conference in Brighton…my first party conference appearance as a cabinet minister would thus be in reply to the most hostile debate of the conference.” The conflagration only settled down when Lawson stopped the price rises in time to prevent the Tories being punished at the next general election.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">In recent years, Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation has been campaigning against measures to reduce carbon emissions and reduce the risk of catastrophic climate change on the basis that such policies will have a profound impact on poorer households.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">Dr Benny Peiser, who works for Lawson as director of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>, claimed that 20 percent of household energy bills were the result of “so called green stealth taxes” and pointed the finger at the Tory-led government’s “stubborn but wrong headed commitment to renewable energy.”</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">The <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/the-hidden-green-tax-in-uk-fuel-bills/">Daily Mail publicised his claim that £206 of the average £1,032 of domestic gas and electricity bills were because of green levies</a>. <a href="http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2011/09/gwpf-mail-pcc">The newspaper was then forced to publish a “clarification”</a> as a result of Peiser’s unsubstantiated claims when Ofgem, the independent regulator, said environmental costs accounted for less than nine percent of bills.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><strong>Energy Giants</strong></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">The founder and chairman for life of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> has in the last weeks been under pressure to name the funders of his charity. It has emerged that one of his secret donors made a significant return on investments in shale gas while another potential donor is a Tory member of the House of Lords who has declared shares in oil giant <span class="caps">BP</span>.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">Household energy bills are likely to be a key election issue in 2015 with Labour and Greens attacking the Tories for allowing household bills to rise while suppliers continue to make austerity-defying profits.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24213366" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Labour leader Ed Miliband called for a freeze in energy prices to protect families and businesses</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> from excessive fuel bills during last years’ Labour conference. He said if he won the next election the energy giants and a new regulator would be introduced. This would cost the companies £4.5billion but save the average household £120 a year and firms £1,800 on average.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">“Your bills will be frozen, benefitting millions of families and millions of businesses,” he said at the time. “That's what I mean by a government that fights for you, that's what I mean when I say: Britain can do better than this.” The announcement provoked <a href="http://news.sky.com/story/1146127/miliband-warns-energy-firms-after-backlash">an immediate backlash from many of the major energy companies</a> who raised the fear of blackouts.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><span id="docs-internal-guid-c029ef3a-9781-3573-2ef9-28c31b3c8130">Miliband was responsible for introducing the Climate Change Act in 2008, the most ambitious legislation of any country in setting targets to significantly reduce carbon emissions, when environment secretary under the Labour government.</span></p>
<p dir="ltr"><em>Additional Reporting: Helen Nianias</em></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7558">Lord Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/18093">Labour Party</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/18094">Labour Conference</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/18086">climate march</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4883">British Gas</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/18095">Gas Bills</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div></div></div>Sun, 21 Sep 2014 09:56:51 +0000Brendan Montague8536 at http://www.desmogblog.comExposed: Lawson’s Climate Denial Donors’ Links to Tobacco and Oil Backed Think Tankhttp://desmog.uk/2014/09/02/exposed-lawson-s-climate-denial-donors-links-tobacco-and-oil-backed-think-tank
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/Nigel%20Lawson%20and%20Neil%20Record.png?itok=PsmHC0mr" width="200" height="138" alt="Nigel Lawson and Neil Record" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><em>Launch of new Global Warming Policy Forum mired by new revelations linking former chancellor to oil and tobacco-funded climate denial think tank</em></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lord Lawson faces increasing scepticism about the independence of his climate denial charity as the names of two of his anonymous donors with links to the tobacco and oil funded Institute of Economic Affairs are disclosed for the first time.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The Tory grandee launched the </span><a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/global-warming-policy-foundation-launches-campaigning-arm/" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Global Warming Policy Forum</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> (<span class="caps">GWPF</span>orum)* yesterday. There had been complaints from the public to the</span><a href="http://www.thirdsector.co.uk/lord-lawson-charity-launches-non-charitable-arm-charity-commission-concerns/governance/article/1293818?DCMP=EMC-CONThirdSectorGovernance&amp;preferredformat=mobile" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> Charity Commission </a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">alleging his Global Warming Policy Foundation was acting politically.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The former chancellor, who retains considerable </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/jul/21/lord-lawson-george-osborne-chancellor" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">influence over his successor George Osborne</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">, has successfully kept the identities of almost all his financial backers a closely guarded secret five years after the foundation was first launched, despite the consternation of <span class="caps">MP</span>s and climate campaigners alike.</span></p>
<p><strong style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">On the Record</strong></p>
<p>But now Neil Record, the founding chairman of his own specialist currency management company, and <a href="http://www.iea.org.uk/about/people">trustee</a> of the <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/537892-record-288a.html">free market Institute of Economic Affairs</a> think tank, has been named for the first time as a financial backer. </p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Asked how much he </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1273578-neil-record-redacted-2.html" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">gave to Lawson’s charity</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">, he replied this was “a private matter on which I am not prepared to comment further.” DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span> estimates the donations to be higher than £100,000. </span></p>
<p><a href="http://www.debretts.com/people-of-today/profile/4267/Nigel-Vinson-VINSON" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Lord Vinson</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">, who was instrumental in the rise to power of the late Margaret Thatcher, has also been named as a <span class="caps">GWPF</span> funder for the first time. The industrialist and peer was made “Life Vice-President” of the <span class="caps">IEA</span>, having worked closely with its first director general, Sir Ralph Harris.</span></p>
<p><a href="http://desmog.uk/2014/09/02/lawson-s-hot-and-cold-affair-institute-economic-affairs"><strong style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="caps">ALSO</span> <span class="caps">SEE</span>: <span class="caps">LAWSON</span>'S <span class="caps">HOT</span> <span class="caps">AND</span> <span class="caps">COLD</span> <span class="caps">AFFAIR</span> <span class="caps">WITH</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">IEA</span></strong></a></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Vinson also set up the Centre for Policy Studies with fellow free market zealots Keith Joseph and Thatcher in 1974 supported by the <span class="caps">IEA</span>. The <span class="caps">CPS</span>, funded by both the tobacco and oil industries, secured Thatcher's rise to power. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Vinson has donated £15,000 to the Global Warming Policy Foundation in the first five years through his own charity, according to documents submitted to the Charity Commission. “I think they are a very admirable institution,” he told me.</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">A third </span><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/27/tory-donor-climate-sceptic-thinktank" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="caps">GWPF</span> funder, Michael Hintze</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">, has previously been named by </span><em style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The Guardian</em><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> although the city investor has refused to confirm the report and disclose the true extent of his largess. Hintze runs the £5 billion hedge fund <span class="caps">CQS</span> and is a generous donor to the Conservative party. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">All three men named have worked closely with the Institute of Economic Affairs, the Westminster-based think tank which has for decades accepted funding from cigarette and petrol multinationals while attacking both the science of tobacco cancer and climate change.</span></p>
<p><strong style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Speaking Fees</strong></p>
<p>An investigation by the newly launched <a href="http://desmog.uk/">climate website DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span></a> has established that <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/321066-iea-accounts-2009.html#search/p23/N%20Record">Record privately donated £36,000 to the <span class="caps">IEA</span></a> to fund a seminar starring Lawson on the same day in November 2009 that the one-time chancellor launched the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> in the House of Commons. Lawson’s speaking fees are up to £12,000 per engagement.</p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Record has told how his confidence in climate science was first called into question when he attended an earlier talk by the American scientist Dr S Fred Singer also attended by Lawson. Singer has a long history of promoting climate denial and has been accused of misleading the public about his own financial support from major oil companies, including ExxonMobil. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Record is also named as a board member of the new Global Warming Policy Forum. When asked about his donation to the foundation, Record said he has “never had any </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1273575-neil-record-redacted.html" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">involvement with the energy sector</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> in any capacity” adding his donation was “paid for with my personal money, not with corporate funds.” </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Record said in a letter: “The organisers (i.e. the <span class="caps">IEA</span>) invited both Lord Lawson and myself to a dinner after the debate…and there I learned about the Global Warming Policy Foundation, of which I had not heard before. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><span class="dquo">“</span>[Lawson] invited me to meet his staff, and as a result of that, I decided the best way in which I could be of some use in furthering sensible debate in the whole climate change arena was to become a supporter (i.e. donor) to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span>.”</span></p>
<p><strong style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Undermining Science</strong></p>
<p>The <span class="caps">IEA</span> established its industry-funded Environment Unit in the early 1990s and published the first reports in the <span class="caps">UK</span> aimed at undermining the then burgeoning science of climate change. </p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The institute was also instrumental in establishing the Covent Garden-based International Policy Network, which during its lifetime accepted funding from ExxonMobil while attending major conferences around the world to raise fears about the policy implications of climate change.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Mark Littlewood, the current director general of the <span class="caps">IEA</span>, personally introduced Record to Lawson after the climate event in November 2009. He said he only “vaguely” knew Lawson but that he was not active in the climate debate because the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> took this role. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">He also confirmed last year that the <span class="caps">IEA</span> continues to receive funding from the oil company <span class="caps">BP</span>. He added: “…we jealously guard our editorial independence and no industry group can commission research from us - but if that's understood I'll bank a cheque from the tobacco industry without a single problem.”</span></p>
<p><span id="docs-internal-guid-2fa81b4e-326a-8c59-3297-d1d5ca352a34">Lord Vinson </span><a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1282808-vinson-to-gwpf-2013.html">donated £5,000</a> to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> in 2011 and then doubled his <a href="https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/1282807-vinson-to-gwpf-2011.html">grant to £10,000</a> last year. This second grant was recorded alongside a donation to the Prince’s Countryside Fund under the category, “For the advancement of environmental protection or improvement”. Vinson has been a long time funder of the <span class="caps">IEA</span>, as well as its once-influential climate denying offshoot the <span class="caps">IPN</span>. </p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The author of this article has been quoted in <em>The Guardian</em> this morning saying: </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">“<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/02/nigel-lawson-climate-sceptic-organisation-funders">Lawson has stubbornly refused</a> to name his donors even though such secrecy must undermine the trust the public has in his climate denial thinktank,” said Brendan Montague, editor of DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span>. “But now we might begin to understand why. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">“The evidence suggests many of Lawson’s funders are associated with the radically neoliberal <span class="caps">IEA</span>, which has a long history of attacking climate science and regulations while accepting money from oil companies.”</span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"> </span></p>
<p>Bob Ward, policy director at the <span class="caps">LSE</span>’s Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change, told the newspaper: “It is not surprising to find such strong links with a right-wing lobby group, the <span class="caps">IEA</span>, which also promotes climate change denial. It is now crystal clear that the campaign by the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> against the <span class="caps">UK</span> government’s climate change policies is driven by right-wing ideological zeal rather than evidence-based reason.”</p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span> intends to publish the names of further Global Warming Policy Foundation funders ahead of the Conservative Party conference held in Birmingham from Sunday, September 28. The investigations website has invited Lawson to publish the full list in order to regain control of the agenda without success.</span></p>
<p><em><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">*<span class="caps">PLEASE</span> <span class="caps">NOTE</span>: All references to the Global Warming Policy Forum on DeSmog <span class="caps">UK</span> and DeSmogBlog will have the abbreviation <span class="caps">GWPF</span>orum. <span class="caps">GWPF</span> will only refer to the charity, the Global Warming Policy Foundation.</span></em></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7558">Lord Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17808">Neil Record</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/17809">Lord Vinson</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3247">Margaret Thatcher</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/640">exxon</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7440">British American Tobacco</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2751">institute of economic affairs</a></div></div></div>Tue, 02 Sep 2014 13:47:32 +0000Brendan Montague8425 at http://www.desmogblog.comRichard Tol's Attack On 97 Percent Climate Change Consensus Study Has 'Critical Errors' http://www.desmogblog.com/2014/05/30/richard-tol-s-attack-97-cent-climate-change-consensus-study-has-critical-errors
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/tol.jpg?itok=Qns_3HiM" width="179" height="235" alt="Professor Richard Tol" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>One of the most consistent of all the attacks from climate science sceptics and deniers is the one which tries to convince the public that expert scientists are divided on the causes of climate change.</p>
<p>Those <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/06/06/campaigns-tried-break-climate-science-consensus" target="_blank">attacks</a> have come from ideologically motivated think tanks and the fossil fuel industry, often working together. Only last week, the Wall Street Journal published a polemic to<a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2014/may/28/wall-street-journal-denies-global-warming-consensus" target="_blank"> try and mislead the public</a> that a consensus does not exist.</p>
<p>In 1998, the American Petroleum Institute was developing a campaign with the explicit aim of convincing the public that <a href="http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/784572/api-global-climate-science-communications-plan.pdf">“uncertainties”</a> existed in the science of climate change and its causes.</p>
<p>In 2002, Republican pollster <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.climatechange">Frank Luntz wrote</a> that: “Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly.”</p>
<p>Several studies have surveyed the views of climate science experts or the scientific literature and have come to the same conclusions — the number of studies and the number of scientists who reject the fact that humans are causing climate change remains vanishingly small.</p>
<p>The latest and most high profile study to survey the scientific literature was led by John Cook, of the University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute and founder of the Skeptical Science website, and published in the journal <a href="http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article" target="_blank">Environmental Research Letters</a> in May 2013.</p>
<p><em>Cook et al</em> analysed close to 12,000 global warming studies from 1991 to 2011 to see how many accepted or rejected the fact that human activities are causing climate change. The researchers also asked scientists themselves to look at their own papers and confirm whether they endorsed the scientific consensus.</p>
<p>The central finding, reported widely and even Tweeted by Barack Obama’s campaign team, was that 97 percent of the scientific papers on climate change found that humans were causing it.</p>
<p>Since that study was published, Professor Richard Tol, an economist from the University of Sussex, has been planning to attack Cook’s paper. </p>
<!--break-->
<p>Tol is advisor to the <span class="caps">UK</span> climate sceptic group the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-policy-foundation">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>, founded by <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson">Lord Nigel Lawson</a>, who was treasurer to former <span class="caps">UK</span> Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Tol is also an <span class="caps">IPCC</span> lead author but withdrew from the team writing the Summary for Policymakers, claiming the report was <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/27/ipcc-author-climate-report-alarmist">“too alarmist”</a>.</p>
<p>Tol accepts that humans cause climate change but his work consistently claims that economic impacts will be small and won’t turn negative until the back end of this century. </p>
<p>This week, the chairman of the Republican-led <span class="caps">US</span> House of Representatives science committee <a href="http://science.house.gov/press-release/witnesses-all-agree-climate-science-not-settled" target="_blank">Lamar Smith claimed</a> that Cook’s study had been “debunked” and that the “science is not settled”.</p>
<p>Professor Tol gave evidence to the committee and when he was asked about the 97 per cent figure, he told the hearing: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The 97 per cent estimate is bandied about by almost everybody. I had a close look at what this study really did and as far as I can see the study just crumbles when you touch it. None of the statements in the papers is supported by any data that is actually in the papers. It is pretty clear that most of the science agrees that climate change is real and most likely human made, but this 97 per cent is essentially pulled from thin air – it’s not based on any credible research whatsoever.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sometime in the coming days, DeSmogBlog understands the journal <a href="http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-policy/">Energy Policy</a> will publish a paper that claims to debunk Cook et al’s work. The research will inevitably be devoured by conservative media. <span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The author is Richard Tol. </span></p>
<p>DeSmogBlog has found the paper was rejected by three journals and heavily criticised by reviewers who saw earlier drafts, who said it had identified “no serious flaws” in the Cook paper, and made some claims that were “not supported by the author’s analyses”.<br /><br />
Cook has told DeSmogBlog that he and his colleagues have found numerous errors.</p>
<p>However, this is unlikely to matter to the world’s conservative media. </p>
<h3>
Tol’s attack plan</h3>
<p>In June 2013, the month after the Cook et al study was published, Tol <a href="http://wottsupwiththatblog.wordpress.com/2013/06/02/watt-about-richard-tol/comment-page-1/#comment-478">commented on a blog</a> that he had “three choices” open to him as a response. </p>
<p>He wrote these were to either “shut up”, write a “destructive comment” or a “constructive comment”. He wrote that he would opt to make a “destructive comment”.</p>
<p>Tol had also submitted a response to Cook et al to Environmental Research Letters — the same journal where Cook’s original paper was published.</p>
<p>Unusually, Tol <a href="http://richardtol.blogspot.com.au/2013/06/draft-comment-on-97-consensus-paper.html?view=magazine" target="_blank">published the anonymous comments</a> from the academics who were asked to review his paper.</p>
<p>One reviewer wrote: “I do not see that the submission has identified any clear errors in the Cook et al. paper that would call its conclusions into question – in fact he agrees that the consensus documented by Cook et al. exists.”</p>
<p>Another reviewer comment said Tol’s paper “provides no reason to question the main conclusions of Cook et al.” </p>
<p>The comment added: “[Tol] merely provides his opinions on where he would have conducted this survey differently and in his view better – and he is free to do just that. But he has not identified serious methodological flaws in Cook et al. that would justify the publication of a Comment.”</p>
<p>In August, <a href="http://richardtol.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/open-letter-to-vice-chancellor-of.html?view=magazine">Tol wrote to the University of Queensland</a>’s vice-chancellor Professor Peter Hoj to complain about what he claimed were errors in Cook’s methodology.</p>
<p>Tol wanted data that would associate the members of Cook’s team to the scientific papers they had looked at. He wrote that he wanted to find out if the ratings might have been impacted by “fatigue”.</p>
<p>This was the same argument he had made in the first draft of his own paper to Environmental Research Letters (<span class="caps">ERL</span>). One reviewer wrote in response to the “fatigue” hypothesis:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Tol presents no evidence that this is a large problem that would significantly alter the results, though, to the contrary – the numbers he presents suggest it is a small problem that would not significantly alter the conclusion of an overwhelming consensus. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The <a href="http://www.uq.edu.au/news/article/2014/05/uq-and-climate-change-research">University of Queensland released a statement</a> responding to claims that it was trying to block the release of important data connected to Cook’s research. The university said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>All data relating to the “Quantifying the Consensus on Anthropogenic Global Warming in the Scientific Literature” paper that are of any scientific value were published on the website Skepticalscience.com in 2013.</p>
<p>Only information that might be used to identify the individual research participants was withheld.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In September 2013, Tol took to <a href="https://twitter.com/RichardTol/status/377353715625107456" target="_blank">Twitter</a> to promote an article written by climate science denialist <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-monckton">Lord Christopher Monckton</a>.</p>
<p>In the article, Monckton went on a name-calling spree, describing the Cook et al authoring team among other things as “zit-faces”, “tiddlers” and “intellectual minnows”.</p>
<p>Tol has published the first seven drafts of his paper on his blog. His paper was rejected twice by Environmental Research Letters and was also rejected by two other journals for being “out of scope” before it was finally accepted by the journal <a href="http://www.journals.elsevier.com/energy-policy/">Energy Policy</a>.</p>
<p>Tol has also created a <a href="http://richardtol.blogspot.com.au/2014/05/my-first-audioslide.html">slideshow based on his Energy Policy paper</a> where he discusses his claims, despite the fact the paper is not yet published.</p>
<p>In one instance, Tol says he reanalyzed the data in the Cook et al paper and found the consensus figure dropped from 97 percent to 91 percent.</p>
<p>Whether or not Tol has addressed the wide-ranging criticisms of his earlier work, remains to be seen.</p>
<p>Cook told DeSmogBlog that a response to Tol’s paper would be published in the same issue of Energy Policy and would document “a number of critical errors”. He said:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Our finding of 97% consensus on human-caused global warming in relevant climate papers was based on the most comprehensive analysis of peer-reviewed climate papers yet to be conducted. Our result is consistent with previous studies, using different methods, which have independently found 97% agreement amongst climate scientists.</p>
<p>I have been invited by the journal to submit a reply to Professor Tol’s paper, to be published in the same issue. Our reply will document a number of critical errors in Professor Tol's paper and will be available once his paper has been published.</p>
</blockquote>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/660">Richard Tol</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7823">john cook</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/16697">97 per cent</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/939">climate change</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3062">climate denial</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/12637">Environmental Research Letters</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/1245">lord christopher monckton</a></div></div></div>Fri, 30 May 2014 16:51:11 +0000Graham Readfearn8183 at http://www.desmogblog.comEnvironmental Research Letters Journal Debunks Conservative Media Claims It Suppressed Climate Researchhttp://www.desmogblog.com/2014/05/16/science-journal-debunks-claims-conservative-media-repressed-climate-research-bengtsson
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/times%20bengtsson.jpg?itok=IxTAGRRn" width="200" height="153" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="dquo">“</span>Some are calling it the new Climategate,” said Fox News' Washington reporter Doug McElway.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/16/climategate-ii-scientific-community-accused-muzzling-dissent-on-global-warming/">McElway was reporting</a> on a story published in the <span class="caps">UK</span>’s <a href="http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/science/article4091344.ece">The Times</a> newspaper that claimed climate change research had been “deliberately suppressed” by a leading journal because it “wasn’t helpful”. </p>
<p>While the central claim in the story now lies in shreds, the way it was treated by the conservative media shows that McElway has a point; just not in the way he meant it. </p>
<p>A key feature of the Climategate saga was how conservative media around the world cherry-picked quotes out of context to spin a conspiracy story that simply wasn’t there.</p>
<p>But this time, instead of it taking several months for inquiries to find no scientific or academic misconduct, the latest non-climate scandal should be killed dead in its tracks by the gnashing teeth of reality.</p>
<!--break-->
<p>The issue surrounds research by University of Reading Professor Lennart Bengtsson, which it’s reported (the original research is not available) had argued the world’s climate was less sensitive to carbon dioxide than other studies had found.</p>
<p>On Friday, The Times claimed that research from Bengtsson had been rejected back in February not for any scientific reason, but because its finding was unhelpful.</p>
<p>The Times story, by environment editor Ben Webster, relied on just two quotes from an anonymous reviewer of Bengtsson’s research.</p>
<p>Webster wrote:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Research which heaped doubt on the rate of global warming was deliberately suppressed by scientists because it was “less than helpful” to their cause, it was claimed last night.</p>
<p>In an echo of the infamous “Climategate” scandal at the University of East Anglia, one of the world’s top academic journals rejected the work of five experts after a reviewer privately denounced it as “harmful”.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The rest of the conservative media quickly followed, with Rupert Murdoch-owned outlets featuring strongly. <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/10835291/Scientists-accused-of-suppressing-research-because-of-climate-sceptic-argument.html">The Daily Telegraph</a>, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/climate-rate-research-banned-as-unhelpful/story-fnb64oi6-1226920701895">The Australian</a>, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2630958/I-victimised-challenging-zealots-says-Professor-Poison-plots-battle-neuter-climate-change-critics.html">The Daily Mail</a>, The Drudge Report and <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2014/05/16/climategate-ii-scientific-community-accused-muzzling-dissent-on-global-warming/">Fox News</a> were just some of the outlets to repeat the claim that Bengtsson’s paper was rejected not on scientific grounds, but on political ones.</p>
<p>Yet only 36 hours later, the claims in the story were lying in shreds after the statements from the publisher of the journal and even from Bengtsson himself.</p>
<p>But rather than learn the lessons from Climategate, the conservative media quickly formed its own unscrupulous echo chamber for The Times claims. </p>
<p><span class="caps">ERL</span> publisher <span class="caps">IOP</span> Publishing took the unusual step of publishing the entire report from the reviewer of Bengtsson’s work.</p>
<p>You can read the <span class="caps">IOP</span> statement and report <a href="http://ioppublishing.org/newsDetails/statement-from-iop-publishing-on-story-in-the-times">in full here</a>, but the short story is that Bengtsson’s paper was recommended for rejection because it was “too simplistic”, was not “innovative” and made comparisons between data sets which were akin to “comparing apples and pears”. <span class="caps">IOP</span> is seeking permission to publish the views of a second reviewer.</p>
<p>Even after being in possession of the <span class="caps">IOP</span> Statement, outlets such as The Daily Mail and The Daily Telegraph were still unable to resist the conspiratorial angle after it had been debunked. </p>
<p>Dr. Nicola Gulley, editorial director at <span class="caps">IOP</span> Publishing, said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The draft journal paper by Lennart Bengtsson that Environmental Research Letters declined to publish, which was the subject of this morning’s front page story of The Times, contained errors, in our view did not provide a significant advancement in the field, and therefore could not be published in the journal.</p>
<p>The decision not to publish had absolutely nothing to do with any ‘activism’ on the part of the reviewers or the journal, as suggested in The Times’ article; the rejection was solely based on the content of the paper not meeting the journal’s high editorial standards.</p>
<p>The referees selected to review this paper were of the highest calibre and are respected members of the international science community. The comments taken from the referee reports were taken out of context and therefore, in the interests of transparency, we have worked with the reviewers to make the full reports available.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gulley added later:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Far from hounding ‘dissenting’ views from the field, Environmental Research Letters positively encourages genuine scientific innovation that can shed light on complicated climate science.</p>
<p>The journal Environmental Research Letters is respected by the scientific community because it plays a valuable role in the advancement of environmental science – for unabashedly not publishing oversimplified claims about environmental science, and encouraging scientific debate.</p>
<p>With current debate around the dangers of providing a false sense of ‘balance’ on a topic as societally important as climate change, we’re quite astonished that The Times has taken the decision to put such a non-story on its front page.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Gulley was not the only one surprised to see the story on the front page of one of the world’s most famous newspapers. So, it seems, was Bengtsson, who directly challenged The Times’ claim.</p>
<p>He told the <span class="caps">UK</span>’s <a href="http://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-claims-climate-research-was-suppressed/">Science Media Centre</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I do not believe there is any systematic “cover up” of scientific evidence on climate change or that academics’ work is being “deliberately suppressed”, as The Times front page suggests. I am worried by a wider trend that science is being gradually being influenced by political views. Policy decisions need to be based on solid fact.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Bengtsson also made headlines earlier in the week, again in conservative media, when it was revealed that he had resigned as an advisor to the climate sceptic Global Warming Policy Foundation. <span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Bengtsson had said that he had resigned after a hostile reaction to his decision to join the group. He said:</span></p>
<blockquote>
<p>I was surprised by the strong reaction from some scientists outside the <span class="caps">UK</span> to joining the Global Warming Policy Foundation this month. I had hoped that it would be platform to bring more common sense into the global climate debate.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Yet if Bengtsson is concerned about political influence and activism invading the policy discussion on climate change, then the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> is not the place to be.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">GWPF</span> was founded by the former <span class="caps">UK</span> conservative treasurer Lord Nigel Lawson who does not reveal the group’s backers.</p>
<p>The only known funder of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> is <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/mar/27/tory-donor-climate-sceptic-thinktank">Michael Hintze</a>, a billionaire hedge fund manager who has continued to donate millions to the <span class="caps">UK</span>’s conservative party.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">GWPF</span> has recently announced that it is to restructure its organisation so that it <em>can</em> lobby and campaign – activities that <span class="caps">UK</span> charities are not allowed to conduct and that Bengtsson apparently frowns upon.</p>
<p>Bengtsson’s former position as an academic advisor saw him temporarily join the likes of Australian sceptics Bob Carter and Ian Plimer - neither of which are known for restraint.</p>
<p>Carter is one of the few sceptics to have <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-sceptic-ad-backfires-20120507-1y8ef.html">endorsed a billboard campaign</a> comparing belief in climate change to the beliefs of a serial killer and terrorist.</p>
<p>Ian Plimer, a geologist and mining company director, has claimed there is no link between carbon dioxide and global temperatures. He once urged an audience at the launch of one of his books to “<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/climate-science-denier-ian-plimer-recruits-former-australian-pm-launch-book-targeting-children">maintain the rage</a>”.</p>
<p>Annual <span class="caps">GWPF</span> lectures have been delivered by the likes of former Czech president Vaclav Klaus, who calls climate scientists “rent seekers”, and Cardinal George Pell, who told a London <span class="caps">GWPF</span> audience that climate campaigners were “spiritually rootless”.</p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://mediamatters.org/blog/2014/05/16/drudge-promotes-global-scientific-conspiracy/199355" target="_blank">Media Matters</a>, The Guardian's <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2014/may/16/murdoch-media-hypes-lone-climate-denial-big-oil" target="_blank">Naffeez Ahmed</a> and <a href="http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2014/05/top-scientific-journal-rejects-times-front-page-article-claims/" target="_blank">Carbon Brief</a> have more on the story.</span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/16442">Lennart Bengtsson</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/12637">Environmental Research Letters</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3468">The Times</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/16443">ben webster</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4768">global warming policy foundation</a></div></div></div>Sat, 17 May 2014 06:38:08 +0000Graham Readfearn8140 at http://www.desmogblog.comTax Breaks In Australia To Fund Climate Misinformation Bookhttp://www.desmogblog.com/2014/04/14/tax-breaks-australia-fund-climate-misinformation-book
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/ipa%20book.jpg?itok=m-1KrQWl" width="200" height="137" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>It's amazing what qualifies for a tax break in Australia these days.</p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The climate science misinformation promotion unit at the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/tags/institute-of-public-affairs">Institute of Public Affairs</a>, a Melbourne-based “free market” think tank, are currently passing the hat around to raise cash to publish a book on climate change.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The <span class="caps">IPA</span> has been pushing and promoting climate science denial since the late 1980s, when it published an article in its magazine asking if there really was a greenhouse effect.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">According to an email to supporters earlier this month from the <span class="caps">IPA</span>’s executive director John Roskam, the think tank has raised $144,545 towards a $175,000 target to publish a book </span><em style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;"><a href="http://thefacts2014.ipa.org.au/" target="_blank">Climate Change: The Facts 2014</a>.</em></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Roskam reminded supporters that their donation for the book would be “tax deductible” and those prepared to part with $400 or more more would even get their name on the back cover.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The list of chapter authors is a predictable line up of denialists and contrarians picked from the blogosphere, conservative media outlets and the associates of secretly funded conservative think tanks.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">They include <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson" target="_blank">Nigel Lawson</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/stewart-franks" target="_blank">Stewart Franks</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/william-kininmonth" target="_blank">Bill Kininmonth</a>, Mark Steyn, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/donna-laframboise" target="_blank">Donna Laframboise</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-michaels" target="_blank">Pat Michaels</a>, Jennifer Marohasy, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/andrew-bolt" target="_blank">Andrew Bolt</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen" target="_blank">Richard Lindzen</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/joanne-nova" target="_blank">Jo Nova</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/anthony-watts" target="_blank">Anthony Watts</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/james-delingpole" target="_blank">James Delingpole</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/rm-bob-carter" target="_blank">Bob Carter</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/ross-mckitrick" target="_blank">Ross McKitrick</a> and <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/ian-plimer" target="_blank">Ian Plimer</a>.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Yep. A few Aussies will have slightly fatter tax refunds (or thinner bills) in exchange for funding climate science denialism and contrarianism from a list of usual suspects.</span></p>
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<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">That means government-endorsed tax breaks to promote the work of James Delingpole — a <span class="caps">UK</span> writer and “interpreter of interpretations” who thinks that climate research is a “junk science boondoggle” and who has compared the wind industry to a pedophile ring.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The <span class="caps">IPA</span> will surely be crossing its fingers that Delingpole’s selection of “facts” <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/09/12/undiscerning-climate-science-bookshelf" target="_blank">improves from his 2012 book Killing The Earth To Save It</a>, published by Connor Court (where <span class="caps">IPA</span> executive director John Roskam is on the editorial board).</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">There, Delingpole sourced a passage from a website called “Green Agenda” which he described as “probably [the] best analysis” of the Club of Rome’s influence on environmental policies.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The “Green Agenda” website is run by fundamentalist Christian “end of times” preachers who warn, amongst many other things, that we should all be watching out for “<a href="http://www.watchmanspost.com/endtimes/endtimestimeline.html" target="_blank">four Angels and three 'Frog-like' evil spirits</a>”.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Those tax incentives will benefit the <span class="caps">IPA</span>-endorsed opinions of Mark Steyn, a Canadian conservative currently being sued for libel by climate change scientist Dr. Michael Mann.</span></p>
<p>Or a teeny bit less in the Australian government’s tax pool so that Ian Plimer, a geologist and mining industry director, can tell you – again - that climate change isn’t caused by increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide.</p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Research has found that <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/03/20/research-reveals-almost-all-climate-science-denial-books-linked-conservative-think-tanks" target="_blank">almost all books sceptical of the risks of human-caused climate change have links to conservative think tanks</a>. As well as being published by one, the <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s offering has among the authors associates of think tanks including the Cato Institute (Lindzen, Michaels), the <span class="caps">IPA</span> (Carter), the Global Warming Policy Foundation (Lawson) and the Frontier Center for Public Policy (Laframboise).</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">This is in fact the second time the <span class="caps">IPA</span> has released a publication erroneously titled </span><em style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Climate Change: The Facts</em><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The first incarnation, released in 2010, included contributions from a similar list of climate sceptics. </span><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">That book also took contributions from Lawson, Plimer, Lindzen and Kininmonth, alongside the likes of <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-monckton">Lord Monckton</a> and Professor Richard Tol.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">As well as gathering cash for its latest climate screed, the <span class="caps">IPA</span> is also readying itself to promote one of the authors on a four-city speaking tour starting at the end of this month.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Flying in from the <span class="caps">US</span> will be Pat Michaels of the Cato Institute, who </span><a href="http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2010/08/16/113717/oil-fueled-pat-michaels/" style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">once estimated that about 40 per cent of his funding came from the petroleum industry</a><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">The <span class="caps">IPA</span> doesn’t say where its funding comes from, but they seem to have plenty of cash coming in. </span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">In its accounts ending June 2012, the Melbourne organisation declared an income of $3.95 million, of which $2.2 million came in straight donations.</span></p>
<p><span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Enough for a book or two, you’d think?</span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/institute-of-public-affairs">Institute of Public Affairs</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/1396">pat michaels</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/cato-institute">cato institute</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3952">richard lindzen</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/8831">Donna Laframboise</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/climate-change-denial">climate change denial</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/15852">climate sceptics</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6904">Frontier Center for Public Policy</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4962">James Delingpole</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/15853">mark steyn</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/michael-mann">michael mann</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4670">Nigel Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4768">global warming policy foundation</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/8876">Stewart Franks</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/622">bob carter</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/15854">bill kininmonth</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/ross-mckitrick">ross mckitrick</a></div></div></div>Mon, 14 Apr 2014 21:43:22 +0000Graham Readfearn7991 at http://www.desmogblog.comAustralia's New Prime Minister Surrounded By Climate Science Denying Voices and Advisorshttp://www.desmogblog.com/2013/10/09/australia-s-new-prime-minister-surrounded-climate-science-denying-voices-and-advisors
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/abbott.jpg?itok=Vjiiyzy8" width="135" height="166" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="caps">WHEN</span> speaking to script, Australia's new conservative Prime Minister Tony Abbott will say that he accepts that human emissions of greenhouse gases are having an impact on the world's climate.</p>
<p>Yet the Liberal Party leader appears to be surrounding himself with ministers and advisers who reject the science of human-caused climate change, with the most outspoken anti-science advocate being Maurice Newman, recently appointed as chairman of the <a href="http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2013-09-26/establishment-prime-ministers-business-advisory-council" target="_blank">Prime Minister's Business Advisory Council</a>.</p>
<p>According to Newman, the current government's two key climate science agencies - the <span class="caps">CSIRO</span> and the Bureau of Meteorology - “continue to propagate the myth of anthropological climate change”, as he wrote last month in the <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/opinion/reorienting_australia_after_six_UX8hu630AD2pxERZeRnO5L" target="_blank">Australian Financial Review</a>.</p>
<p>Writing in <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/climate-change-science-has-become-an-expensive-smokescreen/story-e6frgd0x-1226673364237#" target="_blank">The Australian</a> newspaper in July, Newman described the science of human-caused climate change as a “smokescreen” for “vested interests” and criticised <span class="caps">US</span> President Barack Obama for continuing to “champion discredited research”.</p>
<p>Last November Newman, a former stockbroker and chairman of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was again dripping with hatred for climate scientists and “believers”, who he<a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/opinion/losing-their-religion-as-evidence-cools-off" target="_blank"> described</a> as being part of a global throng of “fundamentalists” who had “collected hundreds of billions of dollars from naive governments that adopted their faith”.</p>
<p>Since entering Government in September, Tony Abbott has already abolished Australia's publicly-funded Climate Commission, re-iterated his “blood oath” to repeal the country's carbon price legislation and has pushed on with attempts to scrap the $10 billion Clean Energy Finance Corporation. The <span class="caps">CEFC</span> has made <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/tony-abbott-cant-stop-green-loans-top-lawyer-says-20130919-2u1ip.html" target="_blank">a reported $500 million in loans </a>since July which have attracted a further $1.6 billion in private investment to projects it has backed.</p>
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<p>Maurice Newman is unlikely to approve of those loans which have gone to wind farm projects, given that he has described wind farms as “grossly inefficient, extremely expensive, socially inequitable, a danger to human health, environmentally harmful, divisive for communities, [and] a blot on the landscape”.</p>
<p>But putting a climate science denier and anti-environmentalist in a key advisory position is nothing new for the Liberal party. In opposition, the party's <a href="http://greghunt.com.au/Home/LatestNews/tabid/133/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/1588/Hunt-announces-Business-Advisory-Council-on-climate-policy.aspx" target="_blank">business advisory group on climate policy</a> included two high-profile climate science sceptics in the form of business figures Hugh Morgan and Dick Warburton. Contempt for climate science and climate scientists is a quality which Tony Abbott has long tolerated among his closest allies.</p>
<p>Former Liberal Senator and powerbroker Nick Minchin, an outspoken climate science denier, was key to Abbott gaining enough support to oust leader Malcolm Turnbull during a bitter leadership contest in 2009. Turnbull's support for a carbon price was the issue that sparked the contest. Minchin once told the <span class="caps">ABC</span> that he believed environmentalism was a cover story for socialists to “de-industrialise the western world” (while no longer a senator, Minchin is reportedly in the running for the job of Australian Consul-General in New York).</p>
<p>Earlier in 2009, Abbott gave a remarkable interview on climate science and policy to <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/content/2008/s2748161.htm" target="_blank"><span class="caps">ABC</span> Lateline</a> presenter Tony Jones. During the interview, Abbott was asked if he had read the most recent report on climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.</p>
<p>He said he hadn't, suggesting that he was a time-poor politician who had to “rely on briefings”. But he then admitted he had found time to read and publicly cite the book <em>Heaven and Earth</em>, written by climate science sceptic and mining entrepreneur Professor Ian Plimer. Abbott said there were “certainly some reputable scientists… who don't accept that the most important element in climate change, to the extent that it's occurring, is man-made carbon dioxide.” In reality, about 97 per cent of published research by climate scientists would disagree with Abbott, as would every national science academy in the developed world.</p>
<p>These days, Abbott is more careful with his language but his appointments to cabinet and his policy positions say much about the extent of his concern for the risks of human caused climate change. At least six members of his 18-strong cabinet have in recent years expressed scepticism over whether fossil fuel burning can cause climate change.</p>
<p>His minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews, has said the “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2009-11-25/andrews-sets-out-leadership-challenge/1155720?section=justin" target="_blank">jury is still out</a>” on whether humans are causing climate change. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, the only woman in Abbott's cabinet, <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/blogs/the-bishops-gambit/what-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-say-on-climate-change-20110323-1c5o2.html" target="_blank">wrote a column in 2011</a> in which she picked quotes from contrarian scientists to argue that climate change might not be caused by humans.</p>
<p>During a scorching, record-breaking heatwave earlier this year, the now Deputy Prime Minister Warren Truss <a href="http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/blogs/the-bishops-gambit/what-the-government-doesnt-want-you-to-say-on-climate-change-20110323-1c5o2.html" target="_blank">ridiculed the notion</a> that heat waves and bushfires could be linked to human-caused climate change.</p>
<p>Employment Minister Senator Eric Abetz chose a <a href="http://abetz.com.au/speeches/the-acorn-has-a-lot-to-answer-for-address-to-saylm" target="_blank">speech to Young Liberals in South Australia</a> last year to characterise environmental concerns over acid rain, ozone depletion, pesticide use and climate change as “Chicken Little-type hysteria”.</p>
<p>Not in Abbott's cabinet is Senator Cory Bernardi, who does not believe that greenhouse gas emissions cause global warming. Bernardi, who helped establish “grassroots” groups to fight Australia's carbon price legislation, had been Abbott's shadow parliamentary secretary until he was <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/cory-bernardi-quits-over-bestiality-comments/story-fn59niix-1226477232022" target="_blank">forced to resign</a> last year over remarks linking same-sex marriage to bestiality.</p>
<p>Even Tony Abbott's lifelong Catholic spiritual mentor, Cardinal George Pell, is a climate change sceptic. In 2004, Sydney Archbishop Pell told a Catholic business leaders summit in Florida that “<a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20060605154745/http://www.sydney.catholic.org.au/Archbishop/Addresses/200627_681.shtml" target="_blank">some of the hysteric and extreme claims about global warming are also a symptom of pagan emptiness</a>”. In 2011, Pell delivered a lecture for the <span class="caps">UK</span>-based Global Warming Policy Foundation which <a href="http://www.crikey.com.au/2011/10/28/climate-scientists-slam-george-pells-utter-rubbish-claims/" target="_blank">climate scientists said</a> was ““dreadful”, “utter rubbish” and “flawed”.</p>
<p>Later this month, another Abbott mentor, Australia's previous Liberal Prime Minister John Howard, will also deliver a lecture to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> - titled <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/honourable-john-howard-deliver-2013-annual-gwpf-lecture/" target="_blank">One Religion Is Enough: How Alarmists Have Hijacked The Climate Debate</a>. It is likely not simply a coincidence that Howard has adopted the rhetoric of Tony Abbott's new business advisor. <span style="letter-spacing: 0.03em; line-height: 1.5em;">Newman counts Howard as a close friend and, as if to close the circle, it was Howard who appointed Newman to be the chairman of the <span class="caps">ABC</span>.</span></p>
<p>Given Australia has just experienced its hottest 12 month period on record, after recording its hottest year on record, after the world experienced its hottest decade on record, and as a report says Australia is more exposed to <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/30/climate-change-study-australia-suffers" target="_blank">climate change impacts than any other advanced economy</a>, perhaps it's time Tony Abbott cast aside the ageing anti-science advisors in his ranks. </p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6878">Tony Abbott</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/australia">Australia</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/939">climate change</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/12795">climate science denial</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3062">climate denial</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7524">Maurice Newman</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7617">Hugh Morgan</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/14003">julie bishop</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/14004">eric abetz</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/14005">kevin andrews</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/14006">gerge pell</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/14007">cardinal pell</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4768">global warming policy foundation</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/tags/abc">ABC</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/tony-jones">tony jones</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/14008">lateline</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/john-howard">John Howard</a></div></div></div>Thu, 10 Oct 2013 00:00:00 +0000Graham Readfearn7542 at http://www.desmogblog.comAustralian University Dumps Bob Carter, Advisor To Multiple Global Climate Science Denial Groupshttp://www.desmogblog.com/2013/07/09/australian-university-dumps-bob-carter-advisor-multiple-global-climate-science-denial-groups
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/carter.jpg?itok=qILojZh3" width="168" height="215" alt="Dr Robert Carter" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="caps">CLIMATE</span> science denialist radio host Chris Smith - of the shock-jock variety - got a little upset recently at a decision made quietly more than six months ago by James Cook University in Queensland, Australia.</p>
<p>“What a bunch of weak pu**ies - James Cook, your management is an absolute disgrace,” screamed an apoplectic Smith on his top-rating <a href="http://www.2gb.com/audioplayer/9976#"><span class="caps">2GB</span></a> afternoon Sydney show, after directing his listeners to pick up the phone and call the university to complain.</p>
<p>What had the folks at <span class="caps">JCU</span> done to attract such an aggressive response?</p>
<p>As I <a href="http://www.readfearn.com/2013/06/heartland-institute-climate-sceptic-author-has-no-status-with-australian-university-james-cook-university-says/" target="_blank">reported two weeks ago</a>, <span class="caps">JCU</span> had decided not to extend the unpaid adjunct professorial status of <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/rm-bob-carter">Dr Robert Carter</a>, who Smith had ready on the line for an interview. Dr Carter (pictured) is a globe-trotting geologist who advises at least ten climate sceptic organisations and “think tanks” from the <span class="caps">UK</span> and Germany to the <span class="caps">US</span> and Australia.</p>
<p>Dr Carter's “official status” with <span class="caps">JCU</span> - where he had held an unpaid adjunct position since 2002 after retiring - had ended on 1 January 2013, the university told me. Before his retirement, he had worked as a Professor at the University from 1989.</p>
<p>This belated news of Dr Carter's “non status” had also infuriated <a href="http://joannenova.com.au/2013/06/jcu-caves-in-to-badgering-and-groupthink-blackballs-politically-incorrect-bob-carter/" target="_blank">climate sceptic blogger JoNova</a>. Both JoNova and Smith claimed that Dr Carter had been booted out because of his fringe-dwelling views on climate change. The <a href="http://www.townsvillebulletin.com.au/article/2013/06/28/384514_news.html" target="_blank">Townsville Bulletin</a> declared Dr Carter had been “dumped” because of his “outspoken views”.</p>
<p>Dr Carter dismisses the role of burning fossil fuels in changing the climate, a position at odds with about 97 per cent of peer-reviewed climate change research and every major science academy in the world. Some of the world's highest profile groups spreading unfounded doubt about the risks and causes of climate change, not to mention a number of high-profile media outlets, turn to Dr Carter for comment, advice and sometimes paid consultancy and provide a forum for his views.</p>
<p>Dr Carter is, for example, the <a href="http://www.ipa.org.au/people/bob-carter" target="_blank">Science Policy Advisor at the Institute of Public Affairs</a> in Melbourne, the chief science advisor to the Canada-based <a href="http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&amp;view=article&amp;id=280" target="_blank">International Climate Science Coalition</a>, a director at the <a href="http://aefweb.info/staff.php" target="_blank">Australian Environment Foundation</a>, a member of the academic advisory council of the <span class="caps">UK</span>'s <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/academic-advisory-council/" target="_blank">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>, an adviser to the Australia-based <a href="http://www.galileomovement.com.au/who_we_are.php/" target="_blank">Galileo Movement</a>, science adviser to the <span class="caps">US</span>-group <a href="http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/personnel.html" target="_blank">Science and Public Policy Institute</a>, a patron of the <span class="caps">UK</span>'s anti-climate legislation group <a href="http://www.repealtheact.org.uk/about" target="_blank">Repeal The Act</a>, an advisor to the <a href="http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&amp;prev=/search%3Fq%3DEIKE%26hl%3Den%26client%3Dfirefox-a%26rls%3Dorg.mozilla:en-US:unofficial%26prmd%3Dimvns&amp;rurl=translate.google.ca&amp;sl=de&amp;u=http://www.eike-klima-energie.eu/fachbeirat/" target="_blank">European Institute for Climate and Energy</a> (<span class="caps">EIKE</span>), an advisor to the <a href="http://www.auscsc.org.au/about_us.html" target="_blank">Australian Climate Science Coalition</a> and an inaugural founder of the <a href="http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&amp;task=blogsection&amp;id=12&amp;Itemid=45" target="_blank">New Zealand Climate Science Coalition</a>.</p>
<p>Internal documents from climate science denying “think tank” the Heartland Institute, which has <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/heartland-institute" target="_blank">accepted millions of dollars from vested interests</a> over the years, also showed the group was planning to <a href="http://www.readfearn.com/2012/02/bob-carter-responds-to-heartland-leak/" target="_blank">pay Dr Carter $1667 a month for his work on its Non-Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change</a> project.</p>
<!--break-->
<div>
<p>Somewhat fortuitously given the long list of special interest groups which Dr Carter has affiliations with, he feels that the standard practice in science of disclosing where funding for research comes from is “<a href="http://www.readfearn.com/2012/02/bob-carter-responds-to-heartland-leak/" target="_blank">a very quaint and old fashioned practice</a>”.</p>
<p>Dr Carter has also spoken at seven of the Heartland Institute's eight conferences for climate sceptics. Many groups like to refer to Dr Carter's affiliation with <span class="caps">JCU</span> (only last week, <a href="http://www.theaustralian.com.au/media/science-watchdog-to-keep-eye-on-abc/story-e6frg996-1226671649449" target="_blank">The Australian newspaper</a> incorrectly did the same), presumably because it lends credibility. Dr Carter's own website (<a href="http://www.webcitation.org/6HqwPXGYs" target="_blank">archived here</a> on 4 July 2013) still carries his university affiliation (as a side note, I refer to Dr Carter as a “Dr” because the title “Professor” is only generally used when an academic has such an affiliation with a university, either paid or unpaid).</p>
<p>Despite his popularity, Dr Carter rarely subjects his thoughts to scientific peer review. On two occasions when he has, the work has been roundly criticised.<br /><br />
One paper was described by Bob Ward, of the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics, as “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/scienceshow/sceptics-publishing-record-on-climate/2961448" target="_blank">probably the worst paper ever published on climate change</a>”. In another, Dr Carter co-authored a paper which claimed natural variation was to blame for recent global warming - a conclusion which <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2009JD012960/abstract" target="_blank">a group of leading climate scientists concluded</a> was “not supported by their analysis or any physical theory presented in their paper”.</p>
<p>But back to Dr Carter's non-status at <span class="caps">JCU</span>. Dr Carter told radio host Smith that <span class="caps">JCU</span> had given him two reasons for their decision to allow his status there to lapse. The first, he told Smith, was that senior executives at the university were having to spend too much time defending Dr Carter's contrarian position. Second, Dr Carter said his former colleagues had decided his views were “not a good fit” for the School of Earth Sciences.</p>
<p>A statement provided to me by <span class="caps">JCU</span> gives a different reason. In short, the university says Dr Carter just wasn't contributing enough to warrant his position. Here's an excerpt from the statement, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/JCU%20statement%20on%20Bob%20Carter%202013.txt" target="_blank">available in full here</a>.</p>
<blockquote>
<span class="caps">JCU</span> believes debate lies at the heart of scientific endeavour and its Code of Conduct states that those involved with the University have the right to make public comment in a professional, expert or individual capacity, provided that they do not represent their opinions as those of the University unless authorised to do so. Dr Carter’s very prominent public contributions to the climate change debate is not something new. He has been promulgating his views, which of course he was entitled to do, for many years while holding an adjunct appointment. But what has changed over the years is the level of his contribution to the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences where he held his adjunct appointment. Academics holding adjunct appointments are expected to contribute on a regular and ongoing basis to one or more of the following University activities:
<ul><li> Teaching;</li>
<li>
Collaborative research;</li>
<li>
Postgraduate supervision; and</li>
<li>
Staff and student consultations.</li>
</ul>
The key question for an adjunct appointment is: “Proposed activities and Perceived Benefits to the School”. While Dr Carter has continued his own research and gives “public talks and advice about climate change and climate change policy” – again as he is perfectly entitled to do – such outreach activities are not related to the work of the School, and do not meet the need to contribute to the School as outlined above. The simple fact was that in the School’s view Dr Carter was no longer undertaking any of the activities within the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences that is required of an adjunct.</blockquote>
<p>Later in the radio interview, host Chris Smith asks Dr Carter several questions about climate change, which you would presume Dr Carter would have been happy to answer given they were taken straight from his new climate sceptic book, <em><a href="http://www.taxingair.com/">Taxing Air</a>. </em></p>
<p>The Institute of Public Affairs, which does not reveal its funding, <a href="http://australianconservative.com/2013/07/memo-coalition-minchin-says-read-taxing-air-before-committing-to-direct-action/" target="_blank">has paid for copies of the book</a> to be sent to every Australian Federal Member of Parliament and Senator. For two decades the “free market” think tank the <span class="caps">IPA</span> has been central to efforts in Australia to spread doubt and confusion about the causes and risks of climate change.</p>
<p>A recent study in the journal <a href="http://abs.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/02/19/0002764213477096.abstract" target="_blank">American Behavioral Scientist</a>, reported on <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2013/03/20/research-reveals-almost-all-climate-science-denial-books-linked-conservative-think-tanks" target="_blank">DeSmogBlog</a>, found almost all books which dismiss the risks of human-caused climate change have strong links to conservative free-market think tanks. It seems Dr Carter's book is yet another to add to that list.</p>
</div>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/1534">Robert Carter</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/622">bob carter</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/13086">jcu</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/1132">james cook university</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/7033">galileo movement</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/5116">Bob Ward</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/13087">jonova</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/13088">chris smith</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/10612">2gb</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/9127">EIKE</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4768">global warming policy foundation</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/821">Heartland Institute</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/climate-change-denial">climate change denial</a></div></div></div>Tue, 09 Jul 2013 19:55:29 +0000Graham Readfearn7300 at http://www.desmogblog.comFOIA Facts 5 - Finds Friends Of GWPFhttp://www.desmogblog.com/foia-facts-5-finds-friends-gwpf
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/social.man_.shutterstock_114050962_0.png?itok=579DHyDB" width="200" height="134" alt="Climate anti-science, social network accidentally exposed" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>People try to paint climate scientists as members of a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+scienc+e+cabal&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a#client=firefox-a&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;q=climate+scientist+cabal&amp;oq=climate+scientist+cabal&amp;gs_l=serp.12...120166.120886.1.124333.5.5.0.0.0.0.275.776.2j1j2.5.0...0.0...1c.1.14.psy-ab.uMExO9YS87g&amp;pbx=1&amp;bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&amp;bvm=bv.470">cabal</a> or <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=climate+scienc+e+cabal&amp;ie=utf-8&amp;oe=utf-8&amp;aq=t&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&amp;client=firefox-a#client=firefox-a&amp;hs=pun&amp;rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&amp;sclient=psy-ab&amp;q=climate+scientist+conspiracy&amp;oq=climate+scientist+conspiracy&amp;gs_l=serp.3...312308.316453.0.317472.17.13.1.3.3.0.181.1496.3j10.13.0...0.0...1c.1.14.psy-ab.xFPSmx-eYls&amp;pbx=1&amp;bav=on.2,">conspiracy </a>to hide the truth, but this idea is often promoted by thinktanks, politicians, bloggers, journalists and some economists, members of a tight social network themselves. Their emails are not usually subject to <span class="caps">FOIA</span>s, but the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/foia-facts-1-more-misdeeds"><span class="caps">FOIA</span> Facts </a>research fortuitously found unexpected data.</p>
<p>Email to Ed Wegman highlighted close relationships between <span class="caps">UK</span>'s main climate anti-science charity, Global Warming Policy Foundation (<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/GWPF"><span class="caps">GWPF</span></a>), its counterparts in the <span class="caps">US</span> and Canada, and some key Congressional staffers. Many email addresses were quite familiar, with a few surprises, including involvement of <a href="https://www.aier.org/"><span class="caps">AIER</span>, a previously unnoticed thinktank</a>.</p>
<p>In the English-speaking machinery of climate anti-science, <span class="caps">GWPF</span> is the main <span class="caps">UK</span> gear, seen to be well-meshed with <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/AEI"><span class="caps">AEI</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cato"><span class="caps">CATO</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/CEI"><span class="caps">CEI</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/CFACT"><span class="caps">CFACT</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/George_C._Marshall_Institute"><span class="caps">GMI</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Heartland_Institute">Heartland Institute(<span class="caps">HI</span>)</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/International_Climate_Science_Coalition"><span class="caps">ICSC</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_for_Energy_Research"><span class="caps">IER</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mercatus_Center">Mercatus (<span class="caps">GMU</span>)</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Property_and_Environment_Research_Center"><span class="caps">PERC</span></a>,<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SEPP"> <span class="caps">SEPP</span></a> plus staffers for Rep. Joe Barton (R-<span class="caps">TX</span>) and Senator James Inhofe (R-<span class="caps">OK</span>), among others.</p>
<!--break-->
<p>In October 2010, <em><span class="caps">USA</span> Today</em>'s Dan Vergano sent <span class="caps">FOIA</span> requests to George Mason University (<span class="caps">GMU</span>), which gave them to Ed Wegman for reply. The <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Tradition_Institute">American Tradition Institute</a> ( <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/david-schnare">David Schnare</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/chris-horner">Chris Horner</a>, etc) published the full sequence <a href="http://www.atinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/ATI-GMU-Vergano-Wegman.pdf">in May 2011</a>, then Vergano put separate files online in 2013, two noted in<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/foia-facts-2-no-pro-bono-federal-funds-mis-used"> <span class="caps">FOIA</span> Facts 2</a>. Regarding Peter Spencer, who <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/STRANGE.SCHOLARSHIP.V1.02.pdf">managed the Wegman Report's creation</a> for Rep. Barton, Wegman <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/702913-email-from-dr-wegman.html">wrote</a> to <span class="caps">GMU</span> <span class="caps">FOIA</span> officer Phil Hunt, forwarding a message from <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Henderson_%28British_economist%29">Patrick David Henderson,</a> Chair of <span class="caps">GWPF</span>'s <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/academic-advisory-council/">Academic Advisory Council:</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>'<span class="caps">VIA</span> <span class="caps">EMAIL</span> on October 19, 2010<br />
Dear Phil: This is the only email <strong>on my <span class="caps">GMU</span> account </strong>that even has Peter Spencer's email. Note that this is from the past August.<br />
Best,<br />
Ed<br />
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 13:18:03 +0100 From: Patrick David Henderson &lt;<span class="caps">EMAIL</span>&gt; Subject: Reviewing the <span class="caps">IPCC</span></p>
<p>To: <em>(list of people enumerated later)</em><br />
Dear All, As you know, the expert committee appointed by the InterAcademy Council to review the role and functioning of the <span class="caps">IPCC</span> is due to report at the end of this month. Against this background, you might be interested to see the three attached documents* which were submitted as evidence to the committee. The respective authors are Gordon Hughes, Ross McKitrick and me.* Although we are all professors of economics, each of these submissions follows its own distinctive line of argument: they are in fact complementary. Taken together, they present a strong case for change, alongside specific proposals for giving effect to it.'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In addition to his long-time <em>gmu.edu</em> email, by September 2005 Wegman began to use a <em>gmail</em> account through which he handled all Wegman Report communication. Henderson sent to both accounts. Wegman had resumed attacks on climate science in 2009, speaking more, giving <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/s-fred-singer">Fred Singer</a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Jeff_Kueter">Jeff Kueter</a> (<span class="caps">GMI</span>) and <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/don-easterbrook">Don Easterbrook</a> slots at his Interface conference, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Sheet.xls">§0.3</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Sheet.xls">§A.6.4.</a> This single email proves nothing about any earlier conversations, except that Wegman claimed no more such messages arrived via <em>gmu.edu</em>. The fortuitous find was <span class="caps">GWPF</span>'s recipient list.</p>
<p><span class="caps">GWPF</span>'s Director is <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/benny_peiser">Benny Peiser</a>, a social (sports) anthropologist known for his <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/skeptics-journal-publishes-plagiarized-paper">inept failed attempt</a> to refute <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full">Naomi Oreske's 2004 essay on consensus in climate science.</a> In 2007, Mr. <a href="http://www.chelseaconsultingrooms.com/our-health-professionals/professor-klaus-martin-schulte/">Klaus-Martin Schulte</a>, then an endocrine surgeon at the <span class="caps">NHS</span> and King's College London, tried again, and <a href="http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=6">likewise failed</a>. Perhaps his obvious endocrinology expertise was even less relevant to climate than Peiser's. That attempt was orchestrated by <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_Ferguson_%28Science_and_Public_Policy_Institute%29">Robert Ferguson</a> and especially the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/christopher-monckton">Viscount Christopher Monckton,</a> an in-law of <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson">Lord Nigel Lawson</a>, the <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/board-of-trustees/">Chairman of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> Board</a>.</p>
<p>Henderson's <strong>To:</strong> list included many long active in climate anti-science, a few new names and some people that seemed irrelevant to climate anti-science, perhaps past associates he wanted to convince and may well not have expected or wanted this email. People are listed by groupings, tagged as <strong><u>H</u></strong>eartland experts or speakers, <strong><u>D</u></strong>eSmogBlog database, <strong>S</strong>ourceWatch, <strong>W</strong>ikipedia, or <strong>O</strong>ther. Mention in earlier reports is tagged as <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/crescendo-climategate-cacophony">c</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/STRANGE.SCHOLARSHIP.V1.02.pdf">s</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-2-more-funny-finances-free-tax">f</a>. Use Full Search on the <span class="caps">PDF</span>s. Many of these people have moved among thinktanks or have many more affiliations, have attended Heartland or other conferences together. This is a very tight-coupled social network, but is not so explicit as the open list of contributors to <span class="caps">IPCC</span> reports.</p>
<p>Relevant scientists are scarce in this list, but it certainly includes many economists associated with politics and/or thinktanks, some with strong ideological bents that seem to make non-scientsts spend their time casting doubt on science they find inconvenient.</p>
<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="794"><colgroup><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /><col /></colgroup><tbody><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;width:141px;">
<strong>Name</strong></td>
<td style="width:39px;">
<strong>Co</strong></td>
<td style="width:181px;">
<strong>Field</strong></td>
<td style="width:159px;">
<strong>Orgs</strong></td>
<td style="width:47px;">
<strong><a href="http://heartland.org/experts">H</a></strong></td>
<td style="width:35px;">
<strong><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/global-warming-denier-database">D</a></strong></td>
<td style="width:44px;">
<strong><a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/SourceWatch">S</a></strong></td>
<td style="width:47px;">
<strong>csf</strong></td>
<td style="width:44px;">
<strong><a href="http://www.wikipedia.org/">W</a></strong></td>
<td style="width:33px;">
<strong>O</strong></td>
<td style="width:27px;">
<strong>O</strong></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Lawson, Nigel</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">UK</span></td>
<td>
Politics <span class="amp">&amp;</span> journ</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">GWPF</span> BoD Chair</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/nigel-lawson">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Lord_Lawson">S</a></td>
<td>
cs</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Lawson">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/damian-carrington-blog/2012/mar/06/climate-change-sceptic-lawson-coal">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tom_Harris">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Peiser, Benny</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">UK</span></td>
<td>
Social anthy</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">GWPF</span> Director</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/benny_peiser">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Benny_Peiser">S</a></td>
<td>
c</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Benny_Peiser">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Henderson, D.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">UK</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">GWPF</span> <span class="caps">AAC</span> Chr</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/david-henderson">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/David_Henderson_%28economist%29">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/8024-economics-climate-change-issues-and-global-salvationism">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/7307-climate-science-economics-and-policy">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Hughes, <span class="caps">G. A.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">UK</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
Edinburgh U</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/hughes-windpower.pdf">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.scottishrenewables.com/news/sr-responds-ref-report-wind-farm-economic-lifespan/">2</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/08/energy-costs-six-confusing-communications">3</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
McKitrick, R.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CA</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
U Guelph, <span class="caps">GMI</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/ross-mckitrick">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ross_McKitrick">S</a></td>
<td>
csf</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
<strong><span class="caps">ACADEMIC</span></strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<strong> <span class="caps">ADVISORY</span></strong></td>
<td>
<strong><span class="caps">COMMITTEE</span></strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Carter, Robert</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">AU</span></td>
<td>
Marine geology</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">HI</span>, <span class="caps">ICSC</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/rm-bob-carter">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Bob_Carter">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_M._Carter">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Robert_Carter">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Courtillot, Vin.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">FR</span></td>
<td>
Geophysics</td>
<td>
U of Paris </td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/vincent-courtillot">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Vincent_Courtillot">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Courtillot">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/11/les-chevaliers-de-lordre-de-la-terre-plate-part-i-allgre-and-courtillot/langswitch_lang/in">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Dyson, Free.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Physics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">IAS</span> Princeton</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/freeman-dyson">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Freeman_Dyson">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_dyson">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Freeman_Dyson">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Happer, Will</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Atomic physics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">GMI</span> Chr, Princeton</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/william-happer">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_Happer">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Happer">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Will_Happer">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Lindzen, Rich.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Atmos. sciences</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">M.I.T.</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_S._Lindzen">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Lindzen">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Richard_Lindzen">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Plimer, Ian</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">AU</span></td>
<td>
Geology</td>
<td>
U Adelaide</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/ian-plimer">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Ian_Plimer">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Plimer">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Ian_Plimer">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Reiter, Paul</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">FR</span></td>
<td>
Med. Entomol</td>
<td>
Pasteur Inst</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/paul-reiter">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Paul_Reiter">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Reiter">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Tol, Richard</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">IE</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">E&amp;SRI</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Richard_Tol">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Tol">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
<strong><span class="caps">TO</span>:</strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<strong>A. <span class="caps">THINKTANKS</span></strong></td>
<td>
<strong><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-2-more-funny-finances-free-tax"><span class="caps">INVOLVED</span></a></strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Green, Ken.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Environ sci <span class="amp">&amp;</span> engr</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">AEI</span>,<span class="caps">ELC</span>, Reason</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/kenneth-green">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Kenneth_Green">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Kenneth_P._Green">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Hayward, <span class="caps">S.F.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
American Studies</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">AEI</span>, <span class="caps">DONORS</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/steven-f-hayward">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Steven_Hayward">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_F._Hayward">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Donors_Capital_Fund">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Lynch, Kerry</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<a href="https://www.aier.org/sites/default/files/publications/EEB200805.pdf"><span class="caps">AIER</span></a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/7028-global-warming-debate">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Global-Warming-Debate-Economics/dp/0913610607">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Illarionov, A.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CATO</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Andrei_Illarionov">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrey_Illarionov">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Niskanen, W.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CATO</span> (d 2011)</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_A._Niskanen">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_A._Niskanen">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Michaels, Pat</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Ecol climatology</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CATO</span>, <span class="caps">WCR</span>, <span class="caps">GMU</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/patrick-michaels">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Patrick_J._Michaels">S</a></td>
<td>
csf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrick_Michaels">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Patrick_Michaels">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Ebell, Myrion</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics?</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CEI</span>, <span class="caps">CHC</span>, FoF</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/myron-ebell">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Myron_Ebell">S</a></td>
<td>
csf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myron_Ebell">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Horner, Chris</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Attorney</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CEI</span>, <span class="caps">CHC</span>, <span class="caps">ATI</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/chris-horner">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Chris_Horner">S</a></td>
<td>
sf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_C._Horner">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.atinstitute.org/about/staff-board-of-directors/">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Lewis, Marlo</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Government</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CEI</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Marlo_Lewis">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://cei.org/expert/marlo-lewis-jr">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Smith, Fred</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Political writer</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CEI</span> </td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fred_Smith">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_L._Smith_%28political_writer%29">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Morano, Marc</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Political Science</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CFACT</span>, Inhofe</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/marc-morano">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Marc_Morano">S</a></td>
<td>
c</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Driessen, Paul</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Attorney, <span class="caps">PR</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CFACT</span>, Atlas+ </td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/paul-driessen">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Paul_Driessen">S</a></td>
<td>
f</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Driessen_%28lobbyist%29">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Bast, Joseph</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
-</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">HI</span> President</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/joseph-bast">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Joseph_Bast">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Miller, Dan</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Journalism</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">HI</span> Publisher</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
f</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Taylor, <span class="caps">J. M.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Attorney, journ.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">HI</span> <span class="caps">E&amp;CN</span> Editor</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/james-taylor">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/James_M._Taylor">S</a></td>
<td>
f</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Harris, Tom</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CA</span></td>
<td>
MechEng-&gt;<span class="caps">PR</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">ICSC</span>, High Park </td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/tom-harris">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Tom_Harris_%28Canadian_engineer/PR_specialist%29">S</a></td>
<td>
cf</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/08/in-the-beginning-the-national-post-terence-corcoran-and-tom-harris">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tom_Harris">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Bradley, R. Jr</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Polit. Economy</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">IER</span>, <span class="caps">CATO</span>, <span class="caps">CEI</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/robert-l-bradley-jr">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Robert_L._Bradley_Jr.">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Murphy, <span class="caps">R. P.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">IER</span>, Reason</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/robert-p-murphy">D</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_P._Murphy">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Morriss, <span class="caps">A. P.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
U <span class="caps">AL</span>,Mercatus,<span class="caps">IER</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://mercatus.org/andrew-morriss">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://perc.org/staff/andrew-morriss">2</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/scholars/">3</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Goklany, Indur</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Electrical Engr.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">PERC</span>, <span class="caps">AEI</span></td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/indur-m-goklany">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Indur_Goklany">S</a></td>
<td>
f</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indur_Goklany">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Singer, Fred</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Physics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">SEPP</span>, <span class="caps">IHS</span>(<span class="caps">GMU</span>)</td>
<td>
H</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/s-fred-singer">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Fred_Singer">S</a></td>
<td>
csf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Singer">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.realclimate.org/wiki/index.php?title=Fred_Singer">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
<strong><span class="caps">TO</span>:</strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<strong>B. <span class="caps">US</span> <span class="caps">CONGRESS</span></strong></td>
<td>
<strong><span class="caps">INVOLVED</span></strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Spencer, P.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Managed Weg Rpt</td>
<td>
House(Barton)</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.legistorm.com/trip/list/by/traveler/id/8305/name/Peter_L_Spencer_Jr_.html">H</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
cs</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Dempsey, M.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Paper 02/23/10</td>
<td>
Senate(Inhofe)</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
c</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&amp;FileStore_id=7db3fbd8-f1b4-4fdf-bd15-12b7df1a0b63">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Lungren, D.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Paper 02/23/10</td>
<td>
Senate(Inhofe)</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
c</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&amp;FileStore_id=7db3fbd8-f1b4-4fdf-bd15-12b7df1a0b63">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
<strong><span class="caps">TO</span>:</strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<strong>C. <span class="caps">OTHERS</span>,</strong></td>
<td>
<strong><span class="caps">INVOLVED</span></strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Wegman, E. J</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Statistics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">GMU</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/edward-wegman">D</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Edward_Wegman">S</a></td>
<td>
csf</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Wegman">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Corcoran, Ter.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CA</span></td>
<td>
Journalist</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">FP</span>,National Post</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terence_Corcoran">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://deepclimate.org/2009/12/08/in-the-beginning-the-national-post-terence-corcoran-and-tom-harris">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.canada.com/nationalpost/columnists/story.html?id=3d2d2672-3b1a-47c7-8324-3e35efee1763">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Bhandari, J.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">SG</span></td>
<td>
Journalist?</td>
<td>
von Mises of <span class="caps">CA</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.jayantbhandari.com/">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://mises.ca/posts/author/jayant-bhandari/">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Rosett, C.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Journalist</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">WSJ</span>, now FftDoD</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Pajamas_Media">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Rosett">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pajamas_Media">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.forbes.com/2008/10/22/climate-united-nations-oped-cx_cr_1023rosett.html">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
<strong><span class="caps">TO</span>:</strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<strong>D. <span class="caps">INVOLVEMENT</span></strong></td>
<td>
<strong><span class="caps">UNCLEAR</span></strong></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Barfield, C.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">AEI</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/American_Enterprise_Institute">S</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.aei.org/files/2013/05/07/-barfield-cv_10521794109.pdf">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Diewert, E.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CA</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">UBC</span>, (Fraser)</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/ediewert/hmpgdie.htm">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Griswold, <span class="caps">D. T.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Politics, econ</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CATO</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_T._Griswold">W</a></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Kraske, <span class="caps">H. Q.</span></td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
?</td>
<td>
1818 World Bank</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="https://pipl.com/directory/name/Kraske/Huda/">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
McCarthy, E.</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Economics</td>
<td>
1818 World Bank</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://www.timcullen.com/who_we_are/associates/washington_egene.html">1</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/EXTSTAFF/1818SOCIETY/0,,contentMDK:21185831~menuPK:444075~pagePK:64156201~piPK:64156133~theSitePK:444067,00.html">2</a></td>
</tr><tr height="20"><td height="20" style="height:20px;">
Vasquez, Ian</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">US</span></td>
<td>
Int'l Studies</td>
<td>
<span class="caps">CATO</span></td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
</td>
<td>
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_V%C3%A1squez">W</a></td>
<td>
<a href="http://genehealy.com/2012/03/catos-ian-vasquez-on-what-the-kochs-have-wrought/">1</a></td>
<td>
</td>
</tr></tbody></table>
<p>Most of these were familiar, as seen by the high density of H, D, S, and csf tags. A new addition is the <a href="http://www.aier.org/sites/default/files/publications/EEB200805.pdf">American Institute of Economic Research</a> (<span class="caps">AIER</span>), which seems a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) public charity that runs a for-profit investment subsidiary. That may bear further scrutiny, but <span class="caps">AIER</span>'s relevance here is in some its various “educational” materials:</p>
<p><strong>2001 </strong><a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/8091-climate-opinion-kyoto-protocols-and-atmospheric-science">A Climate of Opinion: The Kyoto Protocols and Atmospheric Science, </a>?<br />
This Economic Education Bulletin cites <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/robert-h-essenhigh">Robert Essenhigh</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/art-robinson">Arthur Robinson</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/john-christy">John Christy</a>, the <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Greening_Earth_Society">Greening Earth Society</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lawrence_Daly">John Daly</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/indur-m-goklany">Indur Goklany</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen">Richard Lindzen</a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/frederick-seitz-dead">Frederick Seitz</a>, the <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/oregon-petition"><span class="caps">OISM</span> Petition</a>. Readers can assess the quality of “education” provided by this 501(c)(3) entity.</p>
<p><strong>2005 </strong><a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/8024-economics-climate-change-issues-and-global-salvationism">Economics, Climate Change Issues, and Global Salvationism</a>, D.Henderson</p>
<p><strong>2009 </strong><a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/7307-climate-science-economics-and-policy">Climate Science, Economics, and Policy</a>, David Henderson</p>
<p><span class="caps">AIER</span> ran a conference in 2007 with <span class="caps">PDF</span> Proceedings also <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Global-Warming-Debate-Economics/dp/0913610607/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1369984281&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=kerry+lynch+debate">sold as a book</a>, and unlike Heartland Conferences, some participants are quite credible, but readers might guess the likely results given the mix of participants:</p>
<p><strong>2008</strong> <a href="https://www.aier.org/archive-item/7028-global-warming-debate">GlobalWarming Debate Science, Economics, and Policy</a>, Kerry Lynch, Ed.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><br />
'with content by Michale J. Rizzo <em>(sic, <span class="caps">AIER</span>)</em>, Carl Wunsch <em>(<span class="caps">M.I.T.</span>)</em>, David S. Chapman <em>(U Utah, Geology and geophysics)</em>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/William_Cotton"><strong>William R. Cotton</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/william-gray"><strong>William M. Gray</strong></a>, James I. Mills <em>(Architecture <span class="amp">&amp;</span> Planning, U Utah)</em>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/david-henderson"><strong>David Henderson</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/ross-mckitrick"><strong>Ross McKitrick</strong></a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_Rosett"><strong>Claudia Rosett</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/kenneth-green"><strong>Kenneth P. Green</strong></a>, Robert H. Nelson<em> (Environmental Policy, U <span class="caps">MD</span>), </em><a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/calvin-beisner"><strong>E. Calvin Beisner</strong></a>, <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/richard-lindzen"><strong>Richard S. Lindzen.</strong></a>'</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Also participating were Edward J. Kane (Finance, Boston College), <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/robert-mendelsohn"><strong>Robert O. Mendelsohn</strong></a> (Economics, Yale), Gilbert E. Metcalf (Economics, Tufts U), Gordon E. Michaels (<span class="caps">CTO</span> Oak Ridge National Laboratory), <strong>Richard L. Stroup</strong> <strong>(<a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Property_and_Environment_Research_Center"><span class="caps">PERC</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Cato_Institute"><span class="caps">CATO</span></a>, <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mont_Pelerin_Society">Mont Pelerin</a>)</strong>, Peter J. Wilcoxen (Economics and Public Administration, Syracuse U).</p>
<p>People can study the <span class="caps">PDF</span> of the proceedings, which include statements such as these in the Introduction, by <strong><span class="caps">AIER</span> Senior Economist</strong> Michael J. Rizzo:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>'<strong>Just as important, the scientific consensus is not as strong as the popular one</strong>. The state of scientific knowledge is less certain than the media and others often suggest. …</p>
<p>Climate science is extremely complex for three reasons, …<br />
First, it is an immature science….<br />
Second, climate science is virtually the “science of everything.” …<br />
Third, modern climate science relies on large, complicated models that seek to describe and predict the climate system, but these models are inherently unreliable and unstable. For instance, climate models predicted three to six times more warming than that which has occurred to date. Complexity does not ensure accuracy. <strong>(In this regard, climate models are reminiscent of the failed macroeconomic econometric models that were popular a generation ago.)</strong></p>
<p>Thus, even a broad climate “consensus” may prove fragile. …</p>
<p>According to the scientists at our conference, <strong>identifying mankind’s role in the climate question is not easy and might not even be possible for decades. </strong>Potential natural sources of climate change include solar variability, aerosol variation, changes in cloud cover, greenhouse gases, changes in land use, and natural variability from factors such as El Niño and the oceans’ thermohaline circulation. <strong>Changes in any or all of these may be sufficient to account for the changes in global mean temperature since 1880</strong>.</p>
<p><strong>Evidence abounds to suggest that <span class="caps">CO</span>2 is far from the most important contributor to global warming.</strong> Previous interglacial periods were much warmer and had far lower concentrations of <span class="caps">CO</span>2 in the atmosphere; and it might eventually be demonstrated that <span class="caps">CO</span>2 concentrations lag temperature increases. When the temperature change is within a few tenths of a degree, it is difficult to identify the particular causes.'</p>
<p>Some economists can be <a href="http://merchantsofdoubt.org/">Merchants of doubt</a> about science, not just a few old physicists.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>A future post may review the 3 attachments by <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/702911-email-attachment-2-iachgs.html">Hughes</a>, <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/702910-email-attachment-1-iacmck.html">McKitrick</a> and <a href="http://www.documentcloud.org/documents/702912-email-attachment-3-iactxt1.html">Henderson, </a>included with Henderson's email. Some suggestions might actually have been useful. Some rely heavily on McKitrick's opinions of the <span class="caps">IPCC</span> and claims to statistical credibility. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Map.People.FOIA5_.xls">attached spreadsheet</a> is a map of people X (activities and organizations), similar to Appendix A.6 in <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/crescendo-climategate-cacophony">older <span class="caps">PDF</span></a>, wherein many of the abbreviations are explained. Most of the people listed above are strongly connected via shared activities and organizations involved in climate anti-science, with far too many to show in a simple table. Many of the same people appear again and again.</p>
<p><strong>Update 06/13/13</strong>: A few of <span class="caps">GWPF</span>'s<a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/who-we-are/board-of-trustees/"> Advisors</a> are also involved with the <a href="http://www.iea.org.uk/">Instiute for Economic Affairs</a> (<span class="caps">IEA</span>), another <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Institute_of_Economic_Affairs">well-connected thinktank</a>. From <a href="http://www.iea.org.uk/about/fellows-and-advisors"><span class="caps">IEA</span>'s list</a>, those in common include David Henderson, Professor Sir Gordon Peacock and Sir Samuel Brittan. <span class="caps">IEA</span>'s list also included <span class="caps">IER</span>'s Robert L. Bradley (on email list) and George Mason Unversity's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_E._Williams">Walter E. Williams</a>, for whom <a href="http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Nancy_Pfotenhauer">Nancy Mitchell Pfotenhauer</a> was a research assistant. Unlike <span class="caps">GWPF</span>, but like many <span class="caps">US</span> thintkanks, <span class="caps">IEA</span> has had <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2013/jun/01/thinktanks-big-tobacco-funds-smoking">serious tobacco involvement</a>, confirmed by checking the files mentioned in <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/10/23/fakery-2-more-funny-finances-free-tax">Fakery 2</a>, fn203, and searching the <a href="http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/action/search/basic?fd=0&amp;q=&quot;institute+of+economic+affairs&quot;"><span class="caps">LTDL</span></a>. Clearly, <span class="caps">IEA</span> has been involved with Philip Morris, <span class="caps">RJ</span> Reynolds, and British American Tobacco since the 1980s and getting money.</p>
<p><strong>Update 06/13/14</strong>: <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/lord-lawsons-climatechange-think-tank-risks-being-stripped-of-charitable-status-8659314.html">Lord Lawson's climate-change think tank risks being stripped of charitable status. </a></p>
<p><span style="font-size:9px;"><em>Image Credit: <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com/gallery-859249p1.html">Palo_ok</a> / <a href="http://www.shutterstock.com">Shutterstock</a></em></span></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-upload field-type-file field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><table class="sticky-enabled">
<thead><tr><th>Attachment</th><th>Size</th> </tr></thead>
<tbody>
<tr class="odd"><td><span class="file"><img class="file-icon" alt="" title="application/vnd.ms-excel" src="/modules/file/icons/x-office-spreadsheet.png" /> <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/Map.People.FOIA5_.xls" type="application/vnd.ms-excel; length=66048" title="Map.People.FOIA5_.xls">People X (Activities, organizations)</a></span></td><td>64.5 KB</td> </tr>
</tbody>
</table>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/12774">social network</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/865">Wegman</a></div></div></div>Wed, 05 Jun 2013 16:01:40 +0000John Mashey7219 at http://www.desmogblog.comExclusive: British MP On Climate Committee Advising On Coal Power For $300 An Hour http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/11/27/exclusive-british-mp-climate-committee-advising-coal-power-300-hour
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/peterlilley.jpg?itok=TY2xlASw" width="196" height="236" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p>A <span class="caps">BRITISH</span> <span class="caps">MP</span> revealed to be holding $400,000 worth of share options in an oil firm while sitting on an influential parliamentary climate change committee is also being paid $300 an hour to advise an Indian company building a coal fired power station, DeSmogBlog has discovered.</p>
<p>Veteran Conservative <span class="caps">MP</span> Peter Lilley has billed the New Delhi-based Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited (<span class="caps">FACOR</span>) for at least 220 hours of consultancy advice and is still working for the group.</p>
<p>It emerged in The Guardian last week that self-described “<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/25/peter-lilley-climate-change-quotes?intcmp=239" target="_blank">global lukewarmist</a>” Mr Lilley, a <a href="http://www.tethyspetroleum.com/tethys/aboutmgntcontent.action?managementType=BOD" target="_blank">director with Tethys Petroleum</a>, was also holding $400,000 worth of share options in the company which is <a href="http://www.tethyspetroleum.com/tethys/operationssubcontent.action?listSectionCode=THY_OPR" target="_blank">drilling for oil and gas</a> in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.</p>
<p>As <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/nov/20/peter-lilley-oil-company-shares" target="_blank">The Guardian reported</a>, Mr Lilley is also paid by Tethys to attend meetings and provide advice and has received about £47,000 (<span class="caps">US</span>$75,000) in the past year.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">UK</span> Parliament’s <a href="http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm/cmregmem/121119/121119.pdf" target="_blank">register of members’ financial interests</a> shows that in the period from January to June this year, Mr Lilley racked up 228 hours of work for Tethys, <span class="caps">FACOR</span> and <span class="caps">IDOX</span> plc, a document management company where he is also a director.</p>
<p>The register shows how Mr Lilley was paid £37,696 (<span class="caps">US</span>$60,360) for 220 hours of “advice on the management and flotation of a power generating subsidiary” by Ferro Alloys Corporation Limited between July 2011 and June 2012.</p>
<p><span class="caps">FACOR</span> is building a <a href="http://www.facorgroup.in/facor-power-tour.html" target="_blank"><span class="caps">100MW</span> coal fired power station at Randia</a> in the state of Orissa in eastern India to provide electricity to its ferro alloys plant, with excess power being sold to the grid.</p>
<!--break-->
<p>Mr Lilley’s latest payment from <span class="caps">FACOR</span> suggests an hourly rate of £187 (<span class="caps">US</span>$300). The payments from Tethys and <span class="caps">FACOR</span> come on top of Mr Lilley’s annual <span class="caps">MP</span>’s salary of £65,738 (<span class="caps">US</span>$105,000).</p>
<p>Mr Lilley has recently been appointed to the <span class="caps">UK</span> Parliament’s <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/ecc" target="_blank">Energy and Climate Change Committee</a>, which examines the policies of the government’s Department of Energy and Climate Change.</p>
<p>Environment groups <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/oct/25/green-campaigners-condemn-peter-lilley?intcmp=239" target="_blank">criticised the appointment</a>, which has been seen as a sign that “anti-green” forces were gaining hold on the <span class="caps">UK</span>’s Conservative Party.</p>
<p>In a response to questions from me, Mr Lilley confirmed his work with <span class="caps">FACOR</span> was continuing. I asked if his work with the oil and coal sectors represented a conflict of interest, “given your position on the climate committee in a parliament as internationally influential as the <span class="caps">UK</span>.” I also pointed out that the “peer reviewed literature would suggest that coal power is detrimental to the climate”. </p>
<p>In a feisty and provocative response, Mr Lilley said:</p>
<blockquote>
Can you suggest any policies of the <span class="caps">UK</span> government which this Committee exists to scrutinise which have, will or conceivably might affect the profitability of an Indian power company or for that matter an oil company whose operations are entirely in Central Asia? Far from a conflict of interest, my knowledge of the Energy sector (I was a financial analyst specialising in the Energy sector before becoming a minister) is helpful - for example at today's hearings of the Committee I was able to point out that there is no obvious reason for the British government to give the oil industry special tax breaks to incentivise shale gas development, as others assumed. I imagine the only reason anyone should raise the absurd suggestion of a conflict of interest is because they are unable to refute the views I have expressed on the Economics of Climate Change and therefore have to resort to innuendo. I am sorry you have so little faith in your position that you need to resort to that.</blockquote>
<p>Mr Lilley also attached a copy of a report he <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/peter-lilley-costly-decarbonisation-of-the-economy-is-based-on-flawed-stern-review/" target="_blank">authored for the Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>, a climate sceptic group founded by Lord Nigel Lawson, a former chancellor in the Margaret Thatcher government.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://gwpf.w3digital.com/content/uploads/2012/09/Lilley-Stern_Rebuttal3.pdf" target="_blank">report</a> criticised the <span class="caps">UK</span> Government’s perceived reliance on the <em>Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change. </em>Mr Lilley’s interests in Tethys and his lucrative consultancy work for <span class="caps">FACOR</span> are not disclosed in the report.</p>
<p>Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at London School of Economics and Political Science, has said Lilley’s <span class="caps">GWPF</span> report was based on “<a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/2012/10/03/a-case-of-bad-economics-and-fundamentally-flawed-science/" target="_blank">misrepresentations and bad economics</a>”.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">GWPF</span>, which claims to be non-political, has refused to disclose its funders but it was <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/27/tory-donor-climate-sceptic-thinktank" target="_blank">revealed earlier this year</a> that one financier was major Conservative Party donor and billionaire Michael Hintze, an Australian-born <span class="caps">UK</span>-based hedge fund manager.</p>
<p>Several requests to <span class="caps">FACOR</span> for comment went unanswered.</p>
<p><em>Pic credit: Flickr/Pearson Teaching Awards</em></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-profile-related field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Related Profile(s) :&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/nigel-lawson">Nigel Lawson</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/11217">peter lilley</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4670">Nigel Lawson</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/11218">facor</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/11219">tethys</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/939">climate change</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/1092">India</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4768">global warming policy foundation</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2540">desmogblog</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/8734">Michael Hintze</a></div></div></div>Wed, 28 Nov 2012 05:00:00 +0000Graham Readfearn6700 at http://www.desmogblog.comJames Delingpole Raising Cash for Australian Climate Sceptic Think Tankhttp://www.desmogblog.com/2012/09/11/james-delingpole-turns-fundraiser-australian-climate-sceptic-think-tank
<div class="field field-name-field-bimage field-type-image field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><img src="http://www.desmogblog.com/sites/beta.desmogblog.com/files/styles/blog_teaser/public/blogimages/delingpole.jpg?itok=qjefGQVM" width="200" height="248" alt="" /></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-body field-type-text-with-summary field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><p><span class="caps">JAMES</span> Delingpole is a <span class="caps">UK</span> columnist waging a long personal jihad against wind farms, environmentalists and climate science.</p>
<p>A resident blogger and columnist at The Daily Telegraph, Delingpole is probably best known for being among the first mainstream columnists to declare, wrongly as it turned out, that emails illegally hacked from an influential climate research unit showed scientists were trying to con the public.</p>
<p>So he is the perfect person to be appealing for people to donate their cash to the Melbourne-based <a href="http://www.ipa.org.au/" target="_blank">Institute of Public Affairs</a>, a free market think tank which has been working for about 20 years on a campaign to mislead the public about climate science and the impact of carbon pricing.</p>
<p>In the <a href="http://carbontax.ipa.org.au/" target="_blank">appeal</a>, Delingpole lauds the <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s campaign against climate science and action on climate change. Readers of the appeal might be forgiven for thinking the <span class="caps">IPA</span> is struggling for cash. Says Delingpole: “Their budget is always stretched. If you don’t give them money they’ll go broke.”</p>
<p>Yet the <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s most recent financial returns to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission suggest that rather than scrambling around for spare change, the think-tank is in fact in rude financial health.</p>
<!--break-->
<p>For the year ending June 2011, the <span class="caps">ASIC</span> documents show the <span class="caps">IPA</span> declared a before-tax profit of $217,000 with an income of $2.42 million. In 2010, the <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s income was $1.72 million, with before-tax profit of $203,000.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s executive director John Roskam refuses to declare where the <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s money comes from. In a story I wrote for the <a href="http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/environment/bid-to-out-the-money-behind-the-voice-against-climate-change-20120126-1qjfp.html#ixzz26DBUJVAm" target="_blank">Brisbane Times</a> about think-tank funding, Roskam told me that “the reason we don't reveal our donors is because unfortunately our donors - and people who were believed to be our donors - have been intimidated because of their supposed support for us”.</p>
<p>A similar excuse is given by the <span class="caps">UK</span>'s <a href="http://www.thegwpf.org/" target="_blank">Global Warming Policy Foundation</a>, a climate skeptic group founded by its chairman Lord Lawson, a former chancellor in the Thatcher government.</p>
<p>Professor Bob Carter, the <span class="caps">IPA</span>'s science policy advisor, is also an advisor to the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> (as well as at least seven other climate sceptic groups), alongside fellow Australian “sceptic” Professor Ian Plimer, who has also made <a href="http://www.menzieshouse.com.au/2011/11/a-personal-appeal-from-ian-plimer.html" target="_blank">personal appeals for people to hand over cash to the <span class="caps">IPA</span></a>.</p>
<p>As I revealed in a story for <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/mar/27/tory-donor-climate-sceptic-thinktank" target="_blank">The Guardian</a> in March, the only known funder of the <span class="caps">GWPF</span> is Michael Hintze, a <span class="caps">UK</span>-based Australian-born hedge fund manager, donor to the <span class="caps">UK</span> Tory Party, and a man with a personal fortune of $1.4billion, <a href="http://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-hintze/" target="_blank">according to Forbes</a>.</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">IPA</span> also has close ties to the billionaire set in the form of Gina Rinehart, the coal and iron ore mining magnate and world's richest woman. In an address to “<span class="caps">IPA</span> members and friends”, Rinehart recently declared her concern that Australia was becoming too expensive, given that “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-09-05/rinehart-says-aussie-workers-overpaid-unproductive/4243866" target="_blank">Africans want to work, and its workers are willing to work for less than $2 per da</a>y”. The comments prompted a Ugandan television personality to declare Rinehart was “<a href="http://www.news.com.au/national/uganda-tv-star-blasts-gina-rineharts-2-comments/story-fndo4bst-1226468099594" target="_blank">removed from reality</a>”. </p>
<p>The <span class="caps">IPA</span> is currently working in partnership with Rinehart's lobby group <a href="http://www.andev-project.org/" target="_blank">Australians for Northern Development <span class="amp">&amp;</span> Economic Vision</a>, which wants a separate low-tax economic zone for the north of Australia to make it cheaper to run major mining projects. Roskam writes a regular “<a href="http://www.andev-project.org/categories/ifann-emails/" target="_blank">Ideas for a New North</a>” bulletin on the <a href="http://www.andev-project.org/" target="_blank"><span class="caps">ANDEV</span> website</a>.</p>
<p>James Delingpole is also a Rinehart fan. When on Twitter recently someone mischievously asked Delingpole if he was being paid by Gina Rinehart, <a href="http://twitter.com/JamesDelingpole/status/245490961633931264" target="_blank">Delingpole responded</a>: “I totally <span class="caps">LOVE</span> Gina. She is a heroine of our age. Bludging scuzzballs like you are not worthy of her!”</p>
<p>The <span class="caps">IPA</span> paid for Delingpole to <a href="http://www.ipa.org.au/events/information/year/2012/event/james-delingpole" target="_blank">tour Australia in April and May</a> to promote his book “<a href="http://www.connorcourt.com/catalog1/index.php?main_page=product_info&amp;products_id=197&amp;zenid=29175e35660496d0a9392b3dc8a43d09" target="_blank">Killing The Earth To Save It</a>”, published by Connor Court, which has John Roskam on its editorial board.</p>
<p>Now back in wind swept England, Delingpole has announced he will run as an independent anti-wind farm candidate in a November by-election for the seat of Corby, which the <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/politics/2012/09/james-delingpole-running-anti-wind-farm-candidate-constituency-no-wind-farms " target="_blank">New Statesman</a> pointed out doesn't actually have any wind turbines.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-2199284/Wind-farms-Are-wind-farms-saving-killing-A-provocative-investigation-claims-thousands-people-falling-sick-live-near-them.html" target="_blank">Daily Mai</a>l, one of the <span class="caps">UK</span>'s best selling conservative newspapers, saw fit to run a hopelessly one-sided story written by Delingpole on the suggested evils of wind farms a few days after he had announced his decision to run.</p>
<p>In the story, Delingpole described a visit to Waterloo, near Adelaide, which he said resembled a scene from a “horror movie” with the turbines cast in the role as evil baddie. Delingpole is convinced that turbines make people ill, despite there being <a href="http://www.desmogblog.com/2012/08/21/anti-turbine-activist-given-role-observer-australian-wind-power-health-review" target="_blank">no credible evidence</a>. Delingpole didn't declare in the story that he had been in Australia on the dime of the <span class="caps">IPA</span> or that he was currently running as an anti-wind farm candidate in a by-election.</p>
<p>Australian Federal <span class="caps">MP</span> Craig Kelly, the Liberal member for the New South Wales seat of Hughes, was nevertheless impressed by Delingpole's article, given that he cut and pasted chunks of it onto his <a href="http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=443256765727288&amp;set=a.208206749232292.84759.100001289067282&amp;type=1" target="_blank">Facebook page</a> under the heading “<span class="caps">MORE</span> <span class="caps">ON</span> <span class="caps">THE</span> <span class="caps">MULTI</span>-<span class="caps">BILLION</span> <span class="caps">DOLLAR</span> <span class="caps">WIND</span> <span class="caps">FARM</span> <span class="caps">SCANDAL</span>”.</p>
<p>Kelly also declared on his Facebook page that wind energy was “useless” and “Liked” a comment declaring coal to be the “safest and cheapest” form of energy, and how increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere “accelerates crop growth and improves crop yields, as does warming”.</p>
<p>Perhaps some advice to Mr Kelly. Best not to repeat that “<span class="caps">CO</span>2 is plant food” myth to <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/us-drought-food-security-8aug12/1475641.html" target="_blank">drought-stricken farmers in the <span class="caps">US</span></a>. Don't mention either, the <a href="http://solar.gwu.edu/index_files/Resources_files/epstein_full%20cost%20of%20coal.pdf" target="_blank">Harvard-led</a> study showing how that “cheap” coal was costing the <span class="caps">US</span> economy half a trillion dollars a year.</p>
<p>Also not advisable, it seems, is to politely decline Delingpole's request for cash for the <span class="caps">IPA</span>, unless you don't mind a return-serve of foul abuse. The University of Sydney's Professor Christopher Wright said “no thanks” to Delingpole. Here's how the <span class="caps">IPA</span> fundraiser responded.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.readfearn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/delingpole_twitter.jpg"><img alt="" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1148" height="624" src="http://www.readfearn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/delingpole_twitter.jpg" title="delingpole_twitter" width="511" /></a></p>
</div></div></div><div class="field field-name-field-profile-related field-type-node-reference field-label-inline clearfix"><div class="field-label">Related Profile(s) :&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/james-delingpole">James Delingpole</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/bob-carter">Bob Carter</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/ian-plimer">Ian Plimer</a></div></div></div><div class="field field-name-taxonomy-vocabulary-14 field-type-taxonomy-term-reference field-label-above"><div class="field-label">Tags:&nbsp;</div><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4962">James Delingpole</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/institute-of-public-affairs">Institute of Public Affairs</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6735">gina rinehart</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/965">ian plimer</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/622">bob carter</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/tags/ipa">IPA</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3833">Climate</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/3279">denier</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/2540">desmogblog</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/6314">GWPF</a></div><div class="field-item even"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4768">global warming policy foundation</a></div><div class="field-item odd"><a href="/directory/vocabulary/4670">Nigel Lawson</a></div></div></div>Thu, 13 Sep 2012 00:00:00 +0000Graham Readfearn6510 at http://www.desmogblog.com